ESSAYS 


BY 


RALPH    WALDO    EMERSON 


SECOND  SERIES 


anti  Hetoteefc  (Edition 


NIV. 


BOSTON 

HOUGHTON,  MIFFLIN  AND   COMPANY 

New  York:  11  East  Seventeenth  Street 

(Cfre  Ctiter?itJc  press,  CamBriti0e 
1884 


Copyright,  1856  and  1876, 
BY  RALPH  WALDO  EMERSON. 

Copyright,  1883, 
BY  EDWARD  W.  EMERSON. 


All  rights  reserved. 


The  Riverside  Press,  Cambridge  : 
Electrotyped  and  Printed  by  H.  0.  Houghton  &  Co. 


MAI  A) 


CONTENTS. 


X 

I. 

III. 

IV. 
V. 

PAGE 

7 

47 

87 

115 

V  ,—  > 

GIFTS         

.      151 
161 

.     189 

NOMINALIST  AND  REALIST    . 

213 

NEW  ENGLAND  REFORMERS.    Lecture  at  Amory  Hall       .    237 


28582 


THE  POET. 


A  moody  child  and  wildly  wise 

Pursued  the  game  with  joyful  eyes, 

Which  chose,  like  meteors,  their  way, 

And  rived  the  dark  with  private  ray : 

They  overleapt  the  horizon's  edge, 

Searched  with  Apollo's  privilege  ; 

Through  man,  and  woman,  and  sea,  and  star 

Saw  the  dance  of  nature  forward  far  ; 

Through  worlds,  and  races,  and  terms,  and  times 

Saw  musical  order,  and  pairing  rhymes. 


Olympian  bards  who  sung 
Divine  ideas  below, 

Which  always  find  us  young? 
And  always  keep  us  so. 


i. 

THE  POET. 


THOSE  who  are  esteemed  umpires  of  taste  are 
often  persons  who  have  acquired  some  knowledge 
of  admired  pictures  or  sculptures,  and  have  an  in 
clination  for  whatever  is  elegant ;  but  if  you  inquire 
whether  they  are  beautiful  souls,  and  whether  their 
own  acts  are  like  fair  pictures,  you  learn  that  they 
are  selfish  and  sensual.     Their  cultivation  is  local, 
as  if  you  should  rub  a  log  of  dry  wood  in  one  spot 
to  produce  fire,  all  the  rest  remaining  cold.     Their 
knowledge  of  the  fine  arts  is  some  study  of  rules 
and  particulars,  or  some  limited  judgment  of  color 
'pr  form,  which  is  exercised  for  amusement  or  for 
low.     It  is  a  proof  of  the  shallowness  of  the  doc- 
*ine  of  beauty  as  it  lies  in  the  minds  of  our  ama- 
mrs,  that  men  seem  to  have  lost  the  perception  of 
n4;he  instant  dependence  of  form  upon  soul.     There 
ais  no  doctrine,  of  forms  in  our  philosophy.     We 
^ were  put  into  our  bodies,  as  fire  is  put  into  a  pan 
\  to  be  carried  about ;  but  there  is  no  accurate  ad 
justment  between  the  spirit  and  the  organ,  much 


less  is  the  latter  the  germination  of  the  former,  j  So 
in  regard  to  other  forms,  the  intellectual  men  do 
not  believe  in  any  essential  dependence  of  the  ma 
terial  world  on  thought  and  volition.  Theologians 
think  it  a  pretty  air-castle  to  talk  of  the  spiritual 
meaning  of  a  ship  or  a  cloud,  of  a  city  or  a  con 
tract,  but  they  prefer  to  come  again  to  the  solid 
ground  of  historical  evidence ;  and  even  the  poets 
are  contented  with  a  civil  and  conformed  manner 
of  living,  and  to  write  poems  from  the  fancy,  at  a 
safe  distance  from  their  own  experience.  But  the 
highest  minds  of  the  world  have  never  ceased  to 
explore  the  double  meaning,  or  shall  I  say  the 
quadruple  or  the  centuple  or  much  more  manifold 
meaning,  of  every  sensuous  fact ;  Orpheus,  Emped- 
ocles,  Heraclitus,  Plato,  Plutarch,  Dante,  Swe- 
denborg,  and  the  masters  of  sculpture,  picture,  and 
poetry.  For  we  are  not  pans  and  barrows,  nor 
even  porters  of  the  fire  and  torch-bearers,  but  chil 
dren  of  the  fire,  made  of  it,  and  only  the  same  di 
vinity  transmuted  and  at  two  or  three  removes, 
when  we  know  least  about  it.  And  this  hidden 
truth,  that  the  fountains  whence  all  this  river  of 
Time  and  its  creatures  floweth  are  intrinsically) 
ideal  and  beautiful,  draws  us  to  the  consideration 
of  the  nature  and  functions  of  the  Poet,  or  th 
man  of  Beauty ;  to  the  means  and  materials  he 
uses,  and  to  the  general  aspect  of  the  art  in  the 
present  time. 


THE  POET.  11 

"")  * 

The  breadth  of  the  problem  is  great,  for  the  poet 
is  representative.  He  stands  among  partial  men 
for  the  complete  man,  and  apprises  us  not  of  his 
wealth,  but  of  the  common  wealth.  The  young 
man  reveres  men  of  genius,  because,  to  speak  truly, 
they  are  more  himself  than  he  is.  They  receive  of 
the  soul  as  he  also  receives,  but  they  more.  Nature 
enhances  her  beauty,  to  the  eye  of  loving  men, 
from  their  belief  that  the  poet  is  beholding  her 
shows  at  the  same  time.  He  isjsojated_among  his  T 
contempora^iesjby^tr^uth  and  by  his  art,  but_jwi£ji 
in  his  pursuits,  that  iJie 


all  men  sooner  or  later.  For  all  men  liyeby  trujih 
and  stand  in  need  of  expression.  In  love,  in  art, 
in  avarice,  inpoTMc^pirlaEor,  in  games,  we  study 
to  utter  our  painful  secret*.  The  man  is  only  half 
himself,  the  other  half  is  his  expression. 

Notwithstanding  this  necessity  to  be  published, 
adequate  expression  is  rare.  I  know  not]  how  it 
is  that  we  need  an  interpreter,  but  the  great  major 
ity  of  men  seem  to  be  minors,  who  have  not  yet 
come  into  possession  of  their  own,  or  mutes,  who 
cannot  report  the  conversation  they  have  had  with 
nature.  There  is  no  man  who  does  not  anticipate 
a  supersensual  utility  in  the  sun  and  stars,  earth 
and  water.  These  stand  and  wait  to  render  him  a 
peculiar  service.  But  there  is  some  obstruction  or 
some  excess  of  phlegm  in  our  constitution,  which 


12  THE  POET. 

does  not  suffer  them  to  yield  the  due  effect.  Too 
feeble  >f all  the  impressions  of  nature  on  us  to  make 
us  artists.  Every  touch  should  thrill.  Every  man 
should  be  so  much  an  artist  that  he  could  report  in 
conversation  what  had  befallen  him.  Yet,  in  our 
experience,  the  rays  or  appulses  have  sufficient 
force  to  arrive  at  the  senses,  but  not  enough  to 
reach  the  quick  and  compel  the  reproduction  of 
themselves  in  speech.  The  poet  is  the  person  in 
ivhom  these  powers  are  in  balance,  the  man  with 
out  impediment,  who  sees  and  handles  that  which 
others  dream  of,  traverses  the  whole  scale  of  expe 
rience,  and  is  representative  of  man,  in  virtue  of 
being  the  largest  power  to  receive  and  to  im 
part. 

For  the  Universe  has  three  children,  born  at 
one  time,  which  reappear  under  different  names 
in  every  system  of  thought,  whether  they  be  called 
cause,  operation,  and  effect ;  or,  more  poetically, 
Jove,  Pluto,  Neptune  ;  or,  theologically,  the  Father, 
the  Spirit,  and  the  Son ;  (but  which  we  will  call 
here  the  Knower,  the  Doer,  and  the  Sayer^  /These 
stand  respectively  for  the  love  of  truth,  for  the 
love  of  good,  and  for  the  love  of  beauty.  <  These 
three  are  equal.  Each  is  that  which  he  is,  essen 
tially,  so  that  he  cannot  be  surmounted  or  ana 
lyzed,  and  each  of  these  three  has  the  pv/wer  of  the 
others  latent  in  him,  and  his  own,  patent. 


nrm?    T>m?T> 


THE  POET.     \J  13 

j 

The  poet  is  the  sayer,  the  namer,  and  represents 

beauty.  He  is  a  sovereign,  and  stands  on  the  cen 
tre.  For  the  world  is  not  painted  or  adorned,  but 
is  from  the  beginning  beautiful ;  and  God  has  not 
made  some  beautiful  things,  but  Beauty  is  the  cre 
ator  of  the  universe.  Therefore  the  poet  is  not  any 
permissive  potentate,  but  is  emperor  in  his  own 
ri^ht.  Criticism  is  infested  with  a  cant  of  materi- 

o 

alism,  which  assumes  that  manual  skill  and  activity 
is  the  first  merit  of  all  men,  and  disparages  such 
as  say  and  dolnot,  overlooking  the  fact  that  some 
men,  namely  poets,  are  natural  sayers,  sent  into  the 
world  to  the  end  of  expression,  and  confounds  them 
with  those  whose  province  is  action  but  who  quit  it 
to  imitate  the  sayers.  But  Homer's  words  are  as 
costly  and  admirable  to  Homer  as  Agamemnon's 
victories  are  to  Agamemnon.  The  poey  does  not 
wait  for  the  heja  or  the  sage,  but,  as  they  act  and 
think  primarily,  so  he  writes  primarily  what  will 
and  must  be  spoken,  reckoning  the  others,  though 
primaries  also,  yet,  in  respect  to  him,  secondaries * 
and  servants';  as  sitters  or  models  in  the  studio  of  /» 
a  painter,  or  as  assistants  who  bring  building-mate-  1 
rials  to  an  architect. 

For  poetry  was  all  written  before  time  wajg.  and 
whenever  we  are  so  finely  organized  that  we  can 
penetrate  into  that  region  where  the  air  is  music, 
we  hear  those  primal  warblings  and  attempt  to 


14  THE  POET. 

write  them  down,  but  we  lose  ever  and  anon  a  word 
or  a  verse  and  substitute  something  of  our  own, 
and  thus  miswrite  the  poem.  The  men  of  more 
delicate  ear  write  down  these  cadences  more  faith 
fully,  and  these  transcripts,  though  imperfect,  be 
come  the  songs  of  the  nations.  For  nature  is  as 
truly  beautiful  as  it  is  good,  or  as  it  is  reasonable, 
and  must  as  much  appear  as  it  must  be  done,  or  be 
known.  Words  and  deeds  are  quite  indifferent 
modes  of  the  divine  energy.  Words  are  also  ac 
tions,  and  actions  are  a  kind  of  words. 

The  sign  and  credentials  of  the  poet  are  that  he 
announces  that  which  no  man  foretold.  He  is  the 
true  and  only  doctor ;  he  knows  and  tells ;  he  is 

y/ 

the  only  teller  of  news,  for  he  was  present  and  privy 
to  the  appearance  which  he  describes.  He  is  a  be 
holder  of  ideas  and  an  utterer  of  the  necessary  and 
causal.  For  we  do  not  speak  now  of  men  of  poetical 
talents,  or  of  industry  and  skill  in  metre,  but  of  the 
true  poet.  I  took  part  in  a  conversation  the  other 
day  concerning  a  recent  writer  of  lyrics,  a  man  of 
subtle  mind,  whose  head  appeared  to  be  a  music- 
box  of  delicate  tunes  and  rhythms,  and  whose  skill 
and  command  of  language  we  could  not  sufficiently 
praise.  But  when  the  question  arose  whether  he 
was  not  only  a  lyrist  but  a  poet,  we  were  obliged  to 
confess  that  he  is  plainly  a  contemporary,  not  an 
eternal  man.  He  does  not  stand  out  of  our  low 


THE  POET.  15 

O 
limitations,  like  a  Chinxborazo^  under  the  line,  run-       » 

ning  up  from  a  torrid  base  through  all  the  climates 
of  the  globe,  with  belts  of  the  iherbage  of  every  lat 
itude  on  its  high  and  mottled  sides ;  but  this  gen 
ius  is  the  landscape -garden  of  a  modern  house, 
adorned  with  fountains  and  statues,  with  well-bred 
men  and  women  standing  and  sitting  in  the  walks 
and  terraces.  We  hear,  through  all  the  varied 
music,  the  ground-tone  of  conventional  life.  Our 
poets  are  men  of  talents  who  sing,  and  not  the  chil 
dren  of  music.  The  argument  is  secondary,  the 
finish  of  the  verses  is  primary. 

|  For  it  is  not  metres,  but  a  metre-making  argu- 
[  ment  that  makes  a  poem,  —  a  thought  so  passionate 
and  alive  that  like  the  spirit  of  a  plant  or  an  ani 
mal  it  has  an  architecture  of  its  own,  and  adorns 
nature  with  a  new  thing.  The  thought  and  the! 
form  are  equal  in  the  order  of  time,  but  in  the  or-  * 
der  of  genesis  the  thought  is  prior  to  the  form.  The 
poet  has  a  new  thought ;  he  has  a  whole  new  expe 
rience  to  unfold  ;  he  will  tell  us  how  it  was  with 
him,  and  all  men  will  be  the  richer  in  his  fortune. 
For  the  experience  of  each  new  age  requires  a  new 
confession,  and  the  world  seems  always  waiting  for 
its  poet.  I  remember  when  I  was  young  how  much 
I  was  moved  one  morning  by  tidings  that  genius 
had  appeared  in  a  youth  who  sat  near  me  at  table. 
He  had  left  his  work  and  gone  rambling  none  knew 


16  THE  POET. 

whither,  and  had  written  hundreds  of  lines,  but 
could  not  tell  whether  that  which  was  in  him  was 
therein  told ;  he  could  tell  nothing  but  that  all 
was  changed,  —  man,  beast,  heaven,  earth  and  sea. 
How  gladly  we  listened  !  how  credulous  !  Society 
seemed  to  be  compromised.  We  sat  in  the  aurora 
of  a  sunrise  which  was  to  put  out  all  the  stars. 
Boston  seemed  to  be  at  twice  the  distance  it  had 
the  night  before,  or  was  much  farther  than  that. 
Rome,  —  what  was  Rome  ?  Plutarch  and  Shak- 
speare  were  in  the  yellow  leaf,  and  Homer  no  more 
should  be  heard  of.  It  is  much  to  know  that  po 
etry  has  been  written  this  very  day,  under  this  very 
roof,  by  your  side.  What !  that  wonderful  spirit 
has  not  expired !  These,  stony  moments  are  still 
sparkling  and  animated  !  |  I  had  fancied  that  the 
oracles  were  all  silent,  and  nature  had  spent  her 
fires ;  and  behold  !  all  night,  from  every  pore,  these 
fine  auroras  have  been  streaming.  Every  one  has 
some  interest  in  the  advent  of  the  poet,  and  no  one 
knows  how  much  it  may  concern  him.  We  know 
that  the  secret  of  the  world  is  profound,  but  who  or 
what  shall  be  our  interpreter,  we  know  not.  A 
mountain  ramble,  a  new  style  of  face,  a  new  person, 
may  put  the  key  into  our  hands.  Of  course  the 
value  of  genius  to  us  is  in  the  veracity  of  its  report. 
Talent  may  frolic  and  juggle ;  genius  realizes  and 
adds.  Mankind  in  good  earnest  have  availed  so  far 


THE  POET.  17 

in  understanding  themselves  and  their  work,  that 
the  foremost  watchman  on  the  peak  announces  his 
news.  It  is  the  truest  word  ever  spoken,  and  the 
phrase  will  be  the  fittest,  most  musical,  and  the  un 
erring  voice  of  the  world  for  that  time. 

All  that  we  call  sacred  history  attests  that  the 
birth  of  a  poet  is  the  principal  event  in  chronology. 
Man,  never  so  often  deceived,  still  watches  for  the 
arrival  of  a  brother  who  can  hold  him  steady  to  a 
truth  until  he  has  made  it  his  own.  With  what 
joy  I  begin  to  read  a  poem  which  I  confide  in  as  an 
inspiration !  And  now  my  chains  are  to  be  broken ; 
I  shall  mount  above  these  clouds  and  opaque  airs  in 
which  I  live,  —  opaque,  though  they  seem  transpar 
ent,  —  and  from  the  heaven  of  truth  I  shall  see 
and  comprehend  my  relations.  That  will  reconcile 
me  to  life  and  renovate  nature,  to  see  trifles  ani 
mated  by  a  tendency,  and  to  know  what  I  am  doing. 
Life  will  no  more  be  a  noise ;  now  I  shall  see  men 
and  women,  and  know  the  signs  by  which  they  may 
be  discerned  from  fools  and  satans.  This  day  shall 
be  better  than  my  birthday :  then  I  became  an  ani 
mal  ;  now  I  am  invited  into  the  science  of  the  real. 
Such  is  the  hope,  but  the  fraitipn  is  postponed.  Of- 
tener  it  falls  that  this  winged  man,  who  will  carry 
me  into  the  heaven,  whirls  me  into  mists,  then  leaps 
and  frisks  about  with  me  as  it  were  from  cloud  to 
cloud,  still  affirming  that  he  is  bound  heavenward  ; 

VOL.  in.  2 


18  THE  POET. 

and  I,  being  myself  a  novice,  am  slow  in  perceiving 
that  he  does  not  know  the  way  into  the  heavens,  and 
is  merely  bent  that  I  should  admire  his  skill  to  rise, 
like  a  fowl  or  a  flying  fish,  a  little  way  from  the 
ground  or  the  water ;  but  the  all-piercing,  all-feed 
ing,  and  ocular  air  of  heaven  that  man  shall  never 
inhabit.  I  tumble  down  again  soon  into  my  old 
nooks,  and  lead  the  life  of  exaggerations  as  before, 
and  have  lost  my  faith  in  the  possibility  of  any 
guide  who  can  lead  me  thither  where  I  would  be. 

But,  leaving  these  victims  of  vanity,  let  us,  with 
new  hope,  observe  how  nature,  by  worthier  im 
pulses,  has  insured  the  poet's  fidelity  to  his  office 
of  announcement  and  affirming,  namely  by  the 
beauty  of  things,  which  becomes  a  new  and  higher 
beauty  when  expressed.  Nature  offers  ajl  her  crea 
tures  to  him  as  a  picturejanguage.  Being  used  as 
a  type,  a  second  wonderful  value  appears  in  the  ob 
ject,  far  better  than  its  old  value ;  as  the  carpen 
ter's  stretched  cord,  if  you  hold  your  ear  close 
enough,  is  musical  in  the  breeze.  "  Things  more 
excellent  than  every  image,"  says  Jamblichus,  "  are 
expressed  through  images."  Things  admit  of  be 
ing  used  as  symbols  because  nature  is  a  symbol,  in 
the  whole,  and  in  every  part.  Every  line  we  can 
draw  in  the  sand  has  expression ;  and  there  is  no 
body  without  its  spirit  or  genius.  All  _forni  is  an 
effect  of  character  ;  all  condition,  of  the  quality  of 


THE  POET.  19 

the  life ;  all  harmony,  of  health ;  and  for  this  rea 
son  a  perception  of  beauty  should  be  sympathetic, 
or  proper  only  to  the  good.  The  beautiful  rests  on 
the  foundations  of  the  necessary.  The  soul  makes 
the  body,  as  the  wise  Spenser  teaches  :  — 

"  So  every  spirit,  as  it  is  more  pure, 
And  hath  in  it  the  more  of  heavenly  light, 
So  it  the  fairer  body  doth  procure 
To  habit  in,  and  it  more  fairly  dight, 
With  cheerful  grace  and  amiable  sight. 
For,  of  the  soul,  the  body  form  doth  take, 
For  soul  is  form,  and  doth  the  body  make." 

Here  we  find  ourselves  suddenly  not  in  a  critical 
speculation  but  in  a  holy  place,  and  should  go  very 
warily  and  reverently.  We  stand  before  the  secret 
of  the  world,  there  where  Being  passes  into  Appear 
ance  and  Unity  into  Variety. 

The  Universe  is  the  externization  of  the  soul. 
Wherever  the  life  is,  that  bursts  into  appearance 
around  it.  Our  science  is  sensual,  and  therefore 
superficial.  The  earth  and  the  heavenly  bodies, 
physics,  and  chemistry,  we  sensually  treat,  as  if, 
they  were  self -existent ;  but  these  are  the  retinue  or* 
that  Being  we  have,.  "  The  mighty  heaven,"  said 
.JProclus,  "  exhibits,  in  its  transfigurations,  clear 
images  of  the  splendor  of  intellectual  perceptions ; 
being  moved  in  conjunction  with  the  unapparent 
periods  of  intellectual  natures."  Therefore  science 


20  THE  POET. 

always  goes  abreast  with  the  just  elevation  of  the 
man,  keeping  step  with  religion  and  metaphysics ; 
or  the  state  of  science  is  an  index  of  our  self-knowl 
edge.  Since  every  thing  in  nature  answers  to  a 
moral  power,  if  any  phenomenon  remains  brute  and 
dark  it  is  because  the  corresponding  faculty  in  the 
observer  is  not  yet  active. 

No  wonder  then,  if  these  waters  be  so  deep,  that 
we  hover  over  them  with  a  religious  regard.  The 
beauty  of  the  fable  proves  the  importance  of  the 
sense;  to  the  poet,  and  to  all  others;  or,  if  you 
please,  every  man  is  so  far  a  poet  as  to  be  suscep 
tible  of  these  enchantments  of  nature ;  for  all  men 
have  the  thoughts  whereof  the  universe  is  the  cele 
bration.  I  find  that  the  fascination  resides  in  the 
i  symbol.  Who  loves  nature  ?  Who  does  not  ?  Is 
it  only  poets,  and  men  of  leisure  and  cultivation, 
who  live  with  her  ?  No ;  but  also  hunters,  farmers, 
grooms,  and  butchers,  though  they  express  their  af 
fection  in  their  choice  of  life  and  not  in  their  choice 
of  words.  The  writer  wonders  what  the  coachman 
or  the  hunter  values  in  riding,  in  horses  and  dogs. 
It  is  not  superficial  qualities.  When  you  talk  with 
him  he  holds  these  at  as  slight  a  rate  as  you.  His 
worship  is  sympathetic ;  he  has  no  definitions,  but 
he  is  commanded  in  nature  by  the  living  power 
which  he  feels  to  be  there  present.  No  imitation  or 
playing  of  these  things  would  content  him ;  he  loves 


THE  POET.  21 

the  earnest  of  the  north  wind,  of  rain,  of  stone,  and 
wood,  and  iron.  A  beauty  not  explicablejs  dearer 
than  a  beauty  which  we  can  see  to  |frf  fjfflfl  of-  It 
is  nature  the  symbol,  nature  certifying  the  super 
natural,  body  overflowed  by  life  which  he  worships 
with  coarse  but  sincere  rites.  *  / 

/i  The  inwardness  and  mystery  of  this  attachment- 
drive  men  of  every  class  to  the  use  of  emblems. 
The  schools  of  poets  and  philosophers  are  not  more 
intoxicated  with  their  symbols  than  the  populace 
with  theirs.  In  our  political  parties,  compute  the 
power  of  badges  and  emblems.  See  the  great  ball 
which  they  roll  from  Baltimore  to  Bunker  Hill ! 
In  the  political  processions,  Lowell  goes  in  a  loom, 
and  Lynn  in  a  shoe,  and  Salem  in  a  ship.  Witness 
the  cider-barrel,  the  log-cabin,  the  hickory-stick,  the 
palmetto,  and  all  the  cognizances  of  party.  See  the 
power  of  national  emblems.  Some  stars,  lilies, 
leopards,  a  crescent,  a  lion,  an  eagle,  or  other  figure 
which  came  into  credit  God  knows  how,  on  an  old 
rag  of  bunting,  blowing  in  the  wind  on  a  fort  at 
the  ends  of  the  earth,  shall  make  the  blood  tingle 
under  the  rudest  or  the  most  conventional  exterior. 
Lrhe  people  fancy  they  hate  poetry,  and  they  are  all 
poets  and  mystics  !  \^ 

Beyond  this  universality  of  the  symbolic  language, 
we  are  apprised  of  the  divineness  of  this  superior 
use  of  things,  whereby  the  world  is  a  temple  whose 


22  THE  POET. 

walls  are  covered  with  emblems,  pictures,  and  com 
mandments  of  the  Deity,  —  in  this,  that  there  is  no 
fact  in  nature  which  does  not  carry  the  whole  sense 
of  nature ;  and  the  distinctions  which  we  make  in 
events  and  in  affairs,  of  low  and  high,  honest  and 
base,  disappear  when  nature  is  used  as  a  symbol. 
Thought  makes  everything  fit  for  use;:WThe  vocab 
ulary  of  an  omniscient  man  would  embrace  words 
and  images  excluded  from  polite  conversation. 
What  would  be  base,  or  even  obscene,  to  the  ob- 
\  scene,  becomes  illustrious,  spoken  in  a  new  connec 
tion  of  thought.  The  piety  of  the  Hebrew  prophets 
purges  their  grossness.  The ^circumcision  is  an  ex 
ample  of  the  power  of  poetry  to  raise  the  low  and 
offensive.  Small  and  mean  things  serve  as  well  as 
great  symbols.  The  meaner  the  type  by  which  a 
law  is  expressed,  the  more  pungent  it  is,  and  the 
more  lasting  in  the  memories  of  men ;  just  as  we 
choose  the  smallest  box  or  case  in  which  any  need 
ful  utensil  can  be  carried.  Bare  lists  of  words 
are  found  suggestive  to  an  imaginative  and  excited 
mind ;  as  it  is  related  of  Lord  Chatham  that  he  was 
accustomed  to  read  in  Bailey's  Dictionary  when  he 
-was  preparing  to  speak  in  Parliament.  The  poor 
est  experience  is  rich  enough  for  all  the  purposes  of 
expressing  thought.  lEh^L^Qyet^  a  knowledge  of 
new  facts?  Day  and  ni;;'ht,  house  ami  garden,  a 
few  books,  a  few  actions,  serve  us  as  well  as  would 


THE  POET. 

all  trades  and  all  spectacles.  W_e_are  far 
having  exhausted  the  significance  .  of  the  few.  sym- 
J3ols  we.usgg  We  can  come  to  use  them  yet  with  a 
terrible  simplicity.  It  does  not  need  that  a  poem  \ 
^liould  be  long^  Every.  .^OJ^-JZ^as^imae^^^oem..  i 
Every  new  relation  is  a  new  word.  Also  we  use 
defects  and  deformities  to  a  sacred  purpose,  so  ex 
pressing  our  sense  that  the  evils  of  the  world  are 
such  only  to  the  evil  eye.  In  the  old  mythology, 
mythologists  observe,  defects  are  ascribed  to  divine 
natures,  as  lameness  to  Vulcan,  blindness  to  Cupid, 
and  the  like,  —  to  signify  exuberances. 

For  as  it  is  dislocation  and  detachment  from  the 
life  of  God  that  makes  things  ugly,  the  poet,  who 
re-attaches  things  to  nature  and  the  Whole,  —  re- 
attaching  even  artificial  things  and  violations  of 
nature,  to  nature,  by  a  deeper  insight,  —  disposes 
very  easily  of  the  most  disagreeable  facts.  Read-\ 
ers  of  poetry  see  the  factory-  village  and  the  rail 
way,  and  fancy  that  the  poetry  of  the  landscape  is 
broken  up  by  these  ;  for  these  works  of  art  are  not 
yet  consecrated  in  their  reading  ;  but  the  poet  sees 
them  fall  within  the  great  Order  not  less  than  the 
beehive  or  the  spider's  geometrical  web.  Nature 
adopts  them  very  fast  into  her  vital  circles,  and  the 
gliding  train  of  cars  she  loves  like  her  own.  Be 
sides,  in  a  centred  mind,  it  signifies  nothing  how 
many  mechanical  inventions  you  exhibit.  Though 


24  THE  POET. 

you  add  millions,  and  never  so  surprising,  the  fact 
of  mechanics  has  not  gained  a  grain's  weight.  The 
spiritual  fact  remains  unalterable,  by  many  or  by 
few  particulars ;  as  no  mountain  is  of  any  appreci 
able  height  to  break  the  curve  of  the  sphere.  A 
shrewd  country-boy  goes  to  the  city  for  the  first 
time,  and  the  complacent  citizen  is  not  satisfied 
with  his  little  wonder.  It  is  not  that  he  does  not 
see  all  the  fine  houses  and  know  that  he  never  saw 
such  before,  but  he  disposes  of  them  as  easily  as 
the  poet  finds  place  for  the  railway.  The  chief 
value  of  the  new  fact  is  to  enhance  the  great  and 
constant  fact  of  Life,  which  can  dwarf  any  and 
every  circumstance,  and  to  which  the  belt  of  warn- 
pum  and  the  commerce  of  America  are  alike. 

The  world  being  thus  put  under  the  mind  for 
verb  and  noun,  the  poet  is  he  who  can  articulate  it. 
For  though  life  is  great,  and  fascinates  and  absorbs ; 
and  though  all  men  are  intelligent  of  the  symbols 
through  which  it  is  named;  yet  they  cannot  origi 
nally  use  them.  We  are  symbols  and  inhabit  sym 
bols  ;  workmen,  work,  and  tools,  words  and  things, 
birth  and  death,  all  are  emblems  ;  but  we  sympa 
thize  with  the  symbols,  and  being  infatuated  with 
the  economical  uses  of  things,  we  do  not  know  that 
they  are  thoughts,  i^he  poet,  by  an  ulterior  intel 
lectual  perception,  gives  them  a  power  which  makes 
their  old  use  forgotten,  and  puts  eyes  and  a  tongue 


THE  POET.  25 

into  every  dumb  and  inanimate  object.  He  per 
ceives  the  independence  of  the  thought  on  the  sym 
bol,  the  stability  of  the  thought,  the  accidency  and 
i  igacity  of  the  symbol.  Aa  the  eyes  of  LYIKV.-US 
were  said  to  see  through  the  earth,  so  the  poet  turns 
the  world  to  glass,  and  shows  us  all  things  in  their 
right  series  and  procession.  For  through  that  bet 
ter  perception  he  stands  one  step  nearer  to  things, 
and  sees  the  flowing  or  metamorphosis ;  perceives 
that  thought  is  multiform  ;  that  within  the  form  of 
every  creature  is  a  force  impelling  it  to  ascend  into 
a  higher  form  ;  and  following  with  his  eyes  the  life, 
uses  the  forms  which  express  that  life,  and  so  his 
speech  flows  with  the  flowing  of  nature.  All  tho 
facts  of  the  animal  economy,  sex,  nutriment,  ges 
tation,  birth,  growth,  are  symbols  of  the  passage  of 
the  world  into  the  soul  of  man,  to  suffer  there  a 
change  and  reappear  a  new  and  higher  fact.  He 
uses  forms  according  to  the  life,  and  not  according 
to  the  form.  Thisjs  true  science.  The  poet  alone  I 
knows  astronomy,  chemistry,  vegetation  and  anima 
tion,  for  he  does  not  stop  at  these  facts,  but  employs  \ 
them  as  signs.  He  knows  why  the  plain  or  meadow  * 
of  space  was  strown  with  these  flowers  we  call  suns 
and  moons  and  stars ;  why  the  great  deep  is  adorned 
with  animals,  with  men,  and  gods ;  for  in  every 
word  he  speaks  he  rides  on  them  as  the  horses  of 
thought.  \ 


26  THE  POET. 

By  virtue  of  this  science  the  poet  is  the  Namer 
or  Language-maker,  naming  things  sometimes  after 
their  appearance,  sometimes  after  their  essence,  and 
giving  to  every  one  its  own  name  and  not  another's, 
thereby  rejoicing  the  intellect,  which  delights  in 
detachment  or  boundary.  The  poets  made  all  the 
words,  and  therefore  language  is  the  archives  of 
( history,  and,  if  we  must  say  it,  a  sort  of  tomb  of 
'the  muses.  For  though  the  origin  of  most  of  our 
words  is  forgotten,  each  word  was  at  first  a  stroke 
of  genius,  and  obtained  currency  because  for  the 
moment  it  symbolized  the  world  to  the  first  speaker 
and  to  the  hearer.  The  etymologist  finds  the  dead 
est  word  to  have  been  once  a  brilliant  picture. 
Language  is  fossil  poetry.  As  the  limestone  of  the 
continent  consists  of  infinite  masses  of  the  shells  of 
animalcules,  so  language  is  made  up  of  images  or 
\v_Jropes,  which  now,  in  their  secondary  use,  have  long 
ceased  to  remind  us  of  their  poetic  origin.  But  the 
poet  names  the  thing  because  he  sees  it,  or  comes 
one  step  nearer  to  it  than  any  other.  This  expres 
sion  or  naming  is  not  art,  but  a  second  nature, 
grown  out  of  the  first,  as  a  leaf  out  of  a  tree.  What 
we  call  nature  is  a  certain  self-regulated  motion  or 
change ;  (and  nature  does  all  things  by  her  own 
hands,  and  does  not  leave  another  to  baptize  her 
but  baptizes  herself  and  this  through  the  meta 
morphosis  again.  I  remember  that  a  certain  poet 
described  it  to  me  thus  :  — 


THE  POET.  27 

Genius  is  the  activity  which  repairs  the  decays 
of  things,  whether  wholly  or  partly  of  a  material 
and  finite  kind.  Nature,  through  all  her  king 
doms,  insures  herself.  Nobody  cares  for  planting 
the  poor  fungus ;  so  she  shakes  down  from  the  gills 
of  one  jiguric  countless  spores,  any  one  of  which, 
being  preserved,  transmits  new  billions  of  spores 
to-morrow  or  next  day.  The  new  agaric  of  this 
hour  has  a  chance  which  the  old  one  had  not. 
This  atom  of  seed  is  thrown  into  a  new  place,  not 
subject  to  the  accidents  which  destroyed  its  parent 
two  rods  off.  She  makes  a  man ;  and  having 
brought  him  to  ripe  age,  she  will  no  longer  run  the 
risk  of  losing  this  wonder  at  a  blow,  but  she  de 
taches  from  him  a  new  self,  that  the  kind  may  be 
safe  from  accidents  to  which  the  individual  is  ex 
posed?  So  when  the  soul  of  the  poet  has  come  to 
ripeness  of  thought,  she  detaches  and  sends  away 
from  it  its  poems  or  songs,  —  a  fearless,  sleepless, 
deathless  progeny,  which  is  not  exposed  to  the  accU 
dents  of  the  weary  kingdom  of  time ;  a  fearless, 
vivacious  offspring,  clad  with  wings  (such  was  the 
virtue  of  the  soul  out  of  which  they  came)  which 
carry  them  fast  and  far,  and  infix  them  irrecovera 
bly  into  the  hearts  of  men.  /  These  wings  are  the 
beauty  of  the  poet's  soul.  -/The  songs,  thus  flying 
immortal  from  their  mortal  parent,  are  pursued  by 
clamorous  flights  of  censures,  which  swarm  in  far 


28  THE  POET. 

greater  numbers  and  threaten  to  devour  them  ;  but 
these  last  are  not  winged.  At  the  end  of  a  very 
short  leap  they  fall  plump  down  and  rot,  having  re 
ceived  from  the  souls  out  of  which  they  came  no 
beautiful  wings.  But  the  melodies  of  the  poet  as 
cend  and  leap  and  pierce  into  the  deeps  of  infinite 
time. 

So  far  the  bard  taught  me$  using  his  freer 
speech.  But  nature  has  a  higher  end,  in  the  pro 
duction  of  new  individuals,  than  security,  ziamcfy 
ascension,  or  the  passage  of  the  soul  into  higher 
forms.  I  knew  in  my  younger  days  the  sculptor 
who  made  the  statue  of  the  youth  which  stands  in 
the  public  garden.  He  was,  as  I  remember,  unable 
to  tell  directly  what  made  him  happy  or  unhappy, 
but  by  wonderful  indirections  he  could  tell.  He 
rose  one  day,  according  to  his  habit,  before  the 
dawn,  and  saw  the  morning  break,  grand  as  the 
eternity  out  of  which  it  came,  and  for  many  days 
after,  he  strove  to  express  this  tranquillity,  and  lo ! 
his  chisel  had  fashioned  out  of  marble  the  form  of 
a  beautiful  youth,  Phosphorus,  whose  aspect  is  such 
that  it  is  said  all  persons  who  look  on  it  become 
silent.  The  poet  also  resigns  himself  to  his  mood, 
and  that  thought  which  agitated  him  is  expressed, 
but  alter  idem,,  in  a  manner  totally  new.  The  ex 
pression  *is  organic,  or  the  new  type  which  things 


THE  POET.  29 

themselves  take  when  liberated.  As,  in  the  sun,  ob 
jects  paint  their  images  on  the  retina  of  the  eye,  so 
they,  sharing  the  aspiration  of  the  whole  universe, 
tend  to  paint  a  far  more  delicate  copy  of  their  es 
sence  in  his  mind.  Like  the  metamorphosis  of 
things  into  higher  organic  forms  is  their  change 
into  melodies.  Over  everything  stands  its  daemon 
or  soul,  and,  as  the  form  of  the  thing  is  reflected 
by  the  eye,  so  the  soul  of  the  thing  is  reflected  by  a 
melody.  The  sea,  the  mountain-ridge,  Niagara,  and 
every  flower-bed,  pre-exist,  or  super-exist,  in  pre-can- 
tations,  which  sail  like  odors  in  the  air,  and  when 
any  man  goes  by  with  an  ear  sufficiently  fine,  he 
overhears  them  and  endeavors  to  write  down  the 
notes  without  diluting  or  depraving  them/^  And 
herein  is  the  legitimation  of  criticism,  in  the  mind's 
faith  that  the  poems  are  a  corrupt  version  of  some 
text  in  nature  with  which  they  ought  to  be  made  to 
tally  A  A  rhyme  in  one  of  our  sonnets  should  not 
be  less  pleasing  than  the  iterated  nodes  of  a  sea- 
shell,  or  the  resembling  difference  of  a  group  of 
flowers.  The  pairing  of  the  birds  is  an  idyl,  not 
tedious  as  our  idyls  are  ;  a  tempest  is  a  rough  ode, 
without  falsehood  or  rant  ;  a  summer,  with  its 
harvest  sown,  reaped,  and  stored,  is  an  epic  song, 
subordinating  how  many  admirably  executed  parts. 
Why  should  not  the  symmetry  and  truth  that  mod 
ulate  these,  glide  into  our  spirits,  and  we  partici 
pate  the  invention  of  nature  ? 


30  THE  POET. 

This  insight,  which  expresses  itself  by  what  is 
called  Imagination,  is  a  very  high  sort  of  seeing, 
which  does  not  come  by  study,  but  by  the  intellect 
being  where  and  what  it  sees  ;  by  sharing  the  path 
or  circuit  of  things  through  forms,  and  so  making 
them  translucid  to  others.  The  path  of  things  is 
silent.  Will  they  suffer  a  speaker  to  go  with  them  ? 
A  spy  they  will  not  suffer  ;  a  lover,  a  poet,  is  the 
transcendency  of  their  own  nature,  —  him  they  will 
suffer.  The  condition  of  true  naming,  on  the  poet's 
part,  is  his  resigning  himself  to  the  divine  Qu^a 
which  breathes  through  forms,  and  accompanying 
that. 

It  is  a  secret  which  every  intellectual  man 
quickly  learns,  that  beyond  the  energy  of  his  pos 
sessed  and  conscious  intellect  he  is  capable  of  a  new 
,  energy  (as  of  an  intellect  doubled  on  itself),  by 
abandonment  to  the  nature  of  things ;  that  beside 
his  privacy  of  power  as  an  individual  man,  there  is 
a  great  public  power  on  which  he  can  draw,  by  un 
locking,  at  all  risks,  his  human  doors,  and  suffering 
the  ethereal  tides  to  roll  and  circulate  through  him  ; 
then  he  is  caught  up  into  the  life  of  the  Universe, 
his  speech  is  thunder,  his  thought  is  law,  and  his 
words  are  universally  intelligible  as  the  plants  and 
animals.  The  poet  knows  that  he  speaks  ade 
quately  then  only  when  he  speaks  somewhat  wildly, 
or  "  with  the  flower  of  the  mind ; "  not  with  the  in« 


THE  POET.  31 

tellect  used  as  an  organ,  but  with  the  intellect  re 
leased  from  all  service  and  suffered  to  take  its  di 
rection  from  its  celestial  life;  or  as  the  ancients 
were  wont  to  express  themselves,  not  with  intellect   \/ 
alone  but  with  the  intellect  inebriated  by  nectar.  /\ 
As  the  traveller  who  has  lost  his  way  throws  his 
reins  on  his  horse's  neck  and  trusts  to  the  instinct 
of  the  animal  to  find  his  road,  so  must  we  do  with 
the  divine  animal  who  carries  us  through  this  world.  - 
For  if  in  any  manner  we  can  stimulate  this  instinct, 
new  passages  are  opened  for  us  into  nature ;  the 
mind  flows  into  and  through  things  hardest  and 
highest,  and  the  metamorphosis  is  possible. 

This  is  the  reason  why  bards  love  wine,  mead, 
narcotics,  coffee,  tea,  opium,  the  fumes  of  sandal- 
wood  and  tobacco,  or  whatever  other  procurers  of 
animal  exhilaration.  All  men  avail  themselves  of 
such  means  as  they  can,  to  add  this  extraordinary 
power  to  their  normal  powers  ;  and  to  this  end  they 
prize  conversation,  music,  pictures,  sculpture,  danc 
ing,  theatres,  travelling,  war,  mobs,  fires,  gaming, 
politics,  or  love,  or  science,  or  animal  intoxication, 
—  which  are  several  coarser  or  finer  quasi-mechsin- 
ical  substitutes  for  the  true  nectar,  which  is  the  rav 
ishment  of  the  intellect  by  coming  nearer  to  the 
fact.  These  are  auxiliaries  to  the  centrifugal  ten 
dency  of  a  man,  to  his  passage  out  into  free  space, 
and  they  help  him  to  escape  the  custody  of  that  body 


32  THE  POET. 

,,in  which  he  is  pent  up,  and  of  that  jail-yard  of  in 
dividual  relations  in  which  he  is  enclosed.  Hence 
a  great  number  of  such  as  were  professionally  ex- 
pressers  of  Beauty,  as  painters,  poets,  musicians, 
and  actors,  have  been  more  than  others  wont  to  lead 
a  life  of  pleasure  and  indulgence  ;  all  but  the  few 
who  received  ,the  truenectar ;  and,  as  it  was  a  spu 
rious  mode  of  attaining  freedom ,  as  it  was  an  eman 
cipation  not  into  the  heavens  but  into  the  freedom 
of  baser  places,  they  were  punished  for  that  advan 
tage  they  won,  by  a  dissipation  and  deterioration. 
But  never  can  any  advantage  be  taken  of  nature  by 
a  trick.  The  .spirit  of  the  world,  the  great  calm 
presence  of  the  Creator,  comes  not  forth  to  the  sor 
ceries  of  opium  or  of  wine.  The  sublime  vision 
comes  to  the  pure  and  simple  soul  in  a  clean  and 
chaste  body.  That  is  not  an  inspiration,  which  we 
owe  to  narcotics,  but  some  counterfeit  excitement 
and  fury.  Milton  says  that  the  lyric  poet  may 
drink  wine  and  live  generously,  but  the  epic  poet, 
he  who  sr  11  sing  of  the  gods  and  their*  descent 
unto  men,  must  drink  water  out  of  a  wooden  bowl. 
For  poetry  is  not  '  Devil's  wine,'  but  God's  wine. 
It  is  with  this  as  it  is  with  toys.  We  fill  the  hands 
and  nurseries  of  our  children  with  all  manner  of 
dolls,  drums,  and  horses ;  withdrawing  their  eyes 
from  the  plain  face  and  sufficing  objects  of  nature, 
the  sun,  and  moon,  the  animals,  the  water,  and 


THE  POET.  I 

i.*So 


stones,  which  should  be  their  toys.  »So  the  poet's 
habit  of  living  should  be  set  on  a  key  so  low  that 
the  common  influences  should  delight  him.  His 
cheerfulness  should  be  the  gift  of  the  sunlight ;  the 
air  should  suffice  for  his  inspiration,  and  he  should 
be  tipsy  with  water.  That  spirit  which  suffices 
quiet  hearts,  which  seems  to  come  forth  to  such 
from  every  dry  knoll  of  sere  grass,  from  every  pine- 
stump  and  half-imbedded  stone  on  which  the  dull 
March  sun  shines,  comes  forth  to  the  poor  and  hun 
gry,  and  such  as  are  of  simple  taste.  If  thou  fill 
thy  brain  with  Boston  and  New  York,  with  fash 
ion  and  covetousness,  and  wilt  stimulate  thy  jaded 
senses  with  wine  and  French  coffee,  thou  shalt  find 
no  radiance  of  wisdom  in  the  lonely  waste  of  the 
pine  woods. 

If  the  imagination  intoxicates  the  poet,  it  is  not 
inactive  in  other  men.  The  metamorphosis  excites 
in  the  beholder  an  emotion  of  joy.  The  use  of 
symbols  has  a  certain  power  of  emancipation  and 
exhilaration  for  all  men?1^  We  seem  to  be  touched 
by  a  wand  which  makes  us  dance  and  run  about 
happily,  like  children.  We  are  like  persons  who 
come  out  of  a  cave  or  cellar  into  the  open  air. 
This  is  the  effect  on  us  of  tropes,  fables,  oracles, 
and  all  poetic  forms.  Poets  are  thus  liberating 
gods.  Men  have  really  got  a  new  sense,  and  found 
within  their  world  another  world,  or  nest  of  worlds ; 

VOL.  in.  3 


34  THE  POET. 

for,  the  metamorphosis  once  seen,  we  divine  that  it 
does  not  stop.  I  will  not  now  consider  how  much 
this  makes  the  charm  of  algebra  and  the  mathemat 
ics,  which  also  have  their  tropes,  but  it  is  felt  in 
every  definition;  as  when  Aristotle  defines  space, 
to  be  an  immovable  vessel  in  which  things  are  con 
tained  ;  —  or  when  Plato  defines  a  line  to  be  a  flow 
ing  point ;  or  figure  to  be  a  bound  of  solid ;  and 
many  the  like.  What  a  joyful  sense  of  freedom 
we  have  when  Vitruvius  announces  the  old  opinion 
of  artists  that  no  architect  can  build  any  house 
well  who  does  not  know  something  of  anatomy. 
When  Socrates,  in  CharmidfiS,  tells  us  that  the 
soul  is  cured  of  its  maladies  by  certain  incantations, 
and  that  these  incantations  are  beautiful  reasons, 
from  which  temperance  is  generated  in  souls ;  when 
Plato  calls  the  world  an  animal,  and  Timseiis  af 
firms  that  the  plants  also  are  animals ;  or  affirms 
a  man  to  be  a  heavenly  tree,  growing  with  his  root, 
which  is  his  head,  upward ;  and,  as  George  Chap 
man,  following  him,  writes,  — 

"  So  in  our  tree  of  man,  whose  nervie  root 
Springs  in  his  top;  "  — 

when  Orpheus  speaks  of  hoariness  as  "that  white 
flower  which  marks  extreme  old  age  ; "  when  Pro- 
clus  calls  the  universe  the  statue  of  the  intellect  ; 
when  Chaucer,  in  his  praise  of  '  Gentilesjsef '  com- 


THE  POET.  35 

pares  good  blood  in  mean  condition  to  fire,  which, 
though  carried  to  the  darkest  house  betwixt  this 
and  the  mount  of  Caucasus,  will  yet  hold  its  natu 
ral  office  and  burn  as  bright  as  if  twenty  thousand 
men  did  it  behold ;  when  John  saw,  in  the  Apoca 
lypse,  the  ruin  of  the  world  through  evil,  and  the 
stars  fall  from  heaven  as  the  figtree  casteth  her 
untimely  fruit ;  when  .ZEsop  reports  the  whole  cat 
alogue  of  common  daily  relations  through  the  mas 
querade  of  birds  and  beasts  ;  —  we  take  the  cheer 
ful  hint  of  the  immortality  of  our  essence  and  its 
versatile  habit  and  escapes,  as  when  the  gypsies  say 
of  themselves  "  it  is  in  vain  to  hang  them,  they 
cannot  die." 

I  The  poets  are  thus  liberating  gods.  The  ancient 
British  bards  had  for  the  title  of  their  order, 
44  Those  who  are  free  throughout  the  world."  They 
are  free,  and  they  make  free.  An  imaginative 
book  renders  us  much  more  service  at  first,  by  stim 
ulating  us  through  its  tropes,  than  afterward  when 
we  arrive  at  the  precise  sense  of  the  author.  I 
think  nothing  is  of  any  value  in  books  excepting 
the  transcendental  and  extraordinary.  If  a  man  is 
inflamed  and  carried  away  by  his  thought,  to  that 
degree  that  he  forgets  the  authors  and  the  public 
and  heeds  only  this  one  dream  which  holds  him 
like  an  insanity,  let  me  read  his  paper,  and  you 
may  have  all  the  arguments  and  histories  and  criti- 


36  THE  POET. 

cism.  All  the  value  which  attaches  to  Pythagoras, 
Paracelsus,  Cornelius  Agrippa,  Cardan,  Kepler, 
Swedenborg,  Schelling,  Oken,  or  any  other  who  in 
troduces  questionable  facts  into  his  cosmogony,  as 
angels,  devils,  magic,  astrology,  palmistry,  mesmer 
ism,  and  so  on,  is  the  certificate  we  have  of  depar 
ture  from  routine,  and  that  here  is  a  new  witness. 
That  also  is  the  best  success  in  conversation,  the 
I  magic  of  liberty,  which  puts  the  world  like  a  ball 
in  our  hands.  How  cheap  even  the  liberty  then 
seems;  how  mean  to  study,  when  an  emotion  com 
municates  to  the  intellect  the  power  to  sap  and  up 
heave  nature  ;  how  great  the  perspective  !  nations, 
times,  systems,  enter  and  disappear  like  threads  in 
tapestry  of  large  figure  and  many  colors ;  dream 
delivers  us  to  dream,  and  while  the  drunkenness 
lasts  we  will  sell  our  bed,  our  philosophy,  our  re 
ligion,  in  our  opulence. 

There  is  good  reason  why  we  should  prize  this 
liberation.  The  fate  of  the  poor  shepherd,  who, 
blinded  and  lost  in  the  snow-storm,  perishes  in  a 
drift  within  a  few  feet  of  his  cottage  door,  is  an 
emblem  of  the  state  of  man.  On  the  brink  of  the 
waters  of  life  and  truth,  we  are  miserably  dying. 
The  inaccessibleness  of  every  thought  but  that  we 
are  in,  is  wonderful.  What  if  you  come  near  to  it ; 
you  are  as  remote  when  you  are  nearest  as  when 
you  are  farthest.  Every  thought  is  also  a  prison  ; 


THE  POET.  37 

every  heaven  is  also  a  prison.  \JTherefore  we  love 
the  poet,  the  inventor,  who  in  any  form,  whether  in 
an  ode  or  in  an  action  or  in  looks  and  behavior 
has  yielded  us  a  new  thought.  He  .unlocks  our 
chains  and  admits  us  to  a  new  scene.  \ 

This  emancipation  is  dear  to  all  men,  and  the 
power  to  impart  it,  as  it  must  come  from  greater 
depth  and  scope  of  thought,  is  a  measure  of  intel 
lect.  Therefore  all  books  of  the  imagination  en 
dure,  all  which  ascend  to  that  truth  that  the  writer 
sees  nature  beneath  him,  and  uses  it  as  his  expo- 
*nent.  v  Every  verse  or  sentence  possessing  this  vir 
tue  will  take  care  of  its  own  immortality.  The  re 
ligions  of  the  world  are  the  ejaculations  of  a  few 
imaginative  men.  | 

But  the  quality  of  the  imagination  is  to  flow,  and 
not  to  freeze.  The  poet  did  not  stop  at  the  color 
or  the  form,  but  read  their  meaning ;  neither  may 
he  rest  in  this  meaning,  but  he  makes  the  same  ob 
jects  exponents  of  his  new  thought.  Here  is  the 
difference  betwixt  the  poet  and  the  mystic,  that  the 
last  nails  a  symbol  to  one  sense,  which  was  a  true 
sense  for  a  moment,  but  soon  becomes  old  and 
false.  For  all  symbols  are  fluxional ;  all  language 
is  vehicular  and  transitive,  and  is  good,  as  ferries 
and  horses  are,  for  conveyance,  not  as  farms  and 
houses  are,  for  homestead.  Mysticism  consists  in 
the  mistake  of  an  accidental  and  individual  symbol 


38  THE  POET. 

for  an  universal  one.  The  morning-redness  hap 
pens  to  be  the  favorite  meteor  to  the  eyes  of  Jacob 
Behmen,  and  comes  to  stand  to  him  for  truth  and 
faith ;  and,  he  believes,  should  stand  for  the  same 
realities  to  every  reader.  But  the  first  reader  pre 
fers  as  naturally  the  symbol  of  a  mother  and  child, 
or  a  gardener  and  his  bulb,  or  a  jeweller  polishing 
a  gem.  Either  of  these,  or  of  a  myriad  more,  are 
equally  good  to  the  person  to  whom  they  are  sig 
nificant.  Only  they  must  be  held  lightly,  and  be 
very  willingly  translated  into  the  equivalent  terms 
which  others  use.  And  the  mystic  must  be  steadily 
told,  —  All  that  you  say  is  just  as  true  without  the 
tedious  use  of  that  symbol  as  with  it.  Let  us  have 
a  little  algebra,  instead  of  this  trite  rhetoric,— 
universal  signs,  instead  of  these  village  symbols,  — 
and  we  shall  both  be  gainers.  The  history  of 
hierarchies  seems  to  show  that  all  religious  error 
consisted  in  making  the  symbol  too  stark  and  solid, 
and  was  at  last  nothing  but  an  excess  of  the  organ 
of  language. 

Swedenborg,  of  all  men  in  the  recent  ages,  stands 
eminently  for  the  translator  of  nature  into  thought. 
I  do  not  know  the  man  in  history  to  whom  things 
stood  so  uniformly  for  words.  Before  him  the 
metamorphosis  continually  plays.  Everything  on 
which  his  eye  rests,  obeys  the  impulses  of  moral 
nature.  The  figs  become  grapes  whilst  he  eats 


THE  POET.  39 

them.  When  some  of  his  angels  affirmed  a  truth, 
the  laurel  twig  which  they  held  blossomed  in  their 
hands.  The  noise  which  at  a  distance  appeared 
like  gnashing  and  thumping,  on  coming  nearer  was 
found  to  be  the  voice  of  disputants.  The  men  in 
one  of  his  visions,  seen  in  heavenly  light,  appeared 
like  dragons,  and  seemed  in  darkness ;  but  to  each 
other  they  appeared  as  men,  and  when  the  light 
from  heaven  shone  into  their  cabin,  they  com 
plained  of  the  darkness,  and  were  compelled  to 
shut  the  window  that  they  might  see. 

There  was  this  perception  in  him  which  makes 
the  poet  or  seer  an  object  of  awe  and  terror,  name 
ly  that  the  same  man  or  society  of  men  may  wear 
one  aspect  to  themselves  and  their  companions, 
and  a  different  aspect  to  higher  intelligences.  Cer 
tain  priests,  whom  he  describes  as  conversing  very 
learnedly  together,  appeared  to  the  children  who 
were  at  some  distance,  like  dead  horses ;  and  many 
the  like  misappearances.  And  instantly  the  mind 
inquires  whether  these  fishes  under  the  bridge,  yon 
der  oxen  in  the  pasture,  those  dogs  in  the  yard,  are 
immutably  fishes,  oxen,  and  dogs,  or  only  so  appear 
rto  me.  and  perchance  to  themselves  appear  upright 
men  ;  and  whether  I  appear  as  a  man  to  all  eyes. 
The  Bramins  and  Pythagoras  propounded  the  same 
question,  and  if  any  poet  has  witnessed  the  trans 
formation  he  doubtless  found  it  in  harmony  with 


40  THE  POET. 

various  experiences.  We  have  all  seen  changes  as 
considerable  in  wheat  and  caterpillars.  He  is  the 
poet  and  shall  draw  us  with  love  and  terror,  who 
sees  through  the  flowing  vest  the  firm  nature,  and 
can  declare  it. 

I  look  in  vain  for  the  poet  whom  I  describe. 
We  do  not  with  sufficient  plainness  or  sufficient 
profoundness  address  ourselves  to  life,  nor  dare  wre 
chaunt  our  own  times  and  social  circumstance.  If 
we  filled  the  day  with  bravery,  we  should  not 
shrink  from  celebrating  it.  Time  and  nature  yield 
us  many  gifts,  but  not  yet  the  timely  man,  the  new 
religion,  the  reconciler,  whom  all  things  await. 
Dante's  praise  is  that  he  dared  to  write  his  auto 
biography  in  colossal  cipher,  or  into  universality. 
We  have  yet  had  no  genius  in  America,  with  tyran 
nous  eye,  which  knew  the  value  of  our  incompa 
rable  materials,  and  saw,  in  the  barbarism  and 
materialism  of  the  times,  another  carnival  of  the 
same  gods  whose  picture  he  so  much  admires  in 
Homer ;  then  in  the  Middle  Age ;  then  in  Calvin 
ism.  Banks  and  tariffs,  the  newspaper  and  caucus, 
Methodism  and  Unitarianism,  are  flat  and  dull  to 
dull  people,  but  rest  on  the  same  foundations  of 
wonder  as  the  town  of  Troy  and  the  temple  of  Del 
phi,  and  are  as  swiftly  passing  away.  Our  logroll 
ing,  our  stumps  and  their  politics,  our  fisheries, 
our  Negroes  and  Indians,  our  boats  and  our  repu- 


THE  POET.  41 

diations,  the  wrath  of  rogues  and  the  pusillanimity 
of  honest  men,  the  northern  trade,  the  southern 
planting,  the  western  clearing,  Oregon  and  Texas, 
are  yet  unsung.  Yet  America  is  a  poem  in  our 
eyes  ;  its  ample  geography  dazzles  the  imagination, 
and  it  will  not  wait  long  for  metres.  If  I  have  not 
found  that  excellent  combination  of  gifts  in  my 
countrymen  which  I  seek,  neither  could  I  aid  my 
self  to  fix  the  idea  of  the  poet  by  reading  now  and 
then  in  Chalmers's  collection  of  five  centuries  of 
English  poets.  These  are  wits  more  than  poets, 
though  there  have  been  poets  among  them.  But 
when  we  adhere  to  the  ideal  of  the  poet,  we  have 
our  difficulties  even  with  Milton  and  Homer.  Mil 
ton  is  too  literary,  and  Homer  too  literal  and  his 
torical. 

But  I  am  not  wise  enough  for  a  national  criti 
cism,  and  must  use  the  old  largeness  a  little  longer, 
to  discharge  my  errand  from  the  muse  to  the  poet 
concerning  his  art. 

Art  is  the  path  of  the  creator  to  his  work.  The 
paths  or  methods  are  ideal  and  eternal,  though  few 
men  ever  see  them ;  not  the  artist  himself  for  years, 
or  for  a  lifetime,  unless  he  come  into  the  conditions. 
The  painter,  the  sculptor,  the  composer,  the  epic 
rhapsodist,  the  orator,  all  partake  one  desire,  namely 
to  express  themselves  symmetrically  and  abundant 
ly,  not  dwarfishly  and  f ragmentarily.  They  found 


42  THE  POET. 

or  put  themselves  in  certain  conditions,  as,  the 
painter  and  sculptor  before  some  impressive  human 
figures  ;  the  orator,  into  the  assembly  of  the  peo 
ple  ;  and  the  others  in  such  scenes  as  each  has 
found  exciting  to  his  intellect ;  and  each  presently 
feels  the  new  desire.  He  hears  a  voice,  he  sees  a 
beckoning.  Then  he  is  apprised,  with  wonder, 
what  herds  of  demons  hem  him  in.  He  can  no 
more  rest;  he  says,  with  the  old  painter,  "  By  God 
it  is  in  me  and  must  go  forth  of  me."  He  pursues 
a  beauty,  half  seen,  which  flies  before  him.  The 
poet  pours  out  verses  in  every  solitude.  Most  of 
the  things  he  says  are'  conventional,  no  doubt ;  but 
by  and  by  he  says  something  which  is  original  and 
beautiful.  That  charms  him.  He  would  say  noth 
ing  else  but  such  things.  In  our  way  of  talking 
we  say  '  That  is  yours,  this  is  mine  ; '  but  the  poet 
knows  well  that  it  is  not  his  ;  that  it  is  as  strange 
and  beautiful  to  him  as  to  you  ;  he  would  fain  hear 
the  like  eloquence  at  length.  Once  having  tasted 
this  immortal  ichor,  he  cannot  have  enough  of  it, 
and  as  an  admirable  creative  power  exists  in  these 
intellections,  it  is  of  the  last  importance  that  these 
things  get  spoken.  What  a  little  of  all  we  know  is 
said !  What  drops  of  all  the  sea  of  our  science 
are  baled  up  !  and  by  what  accident  it  is  that  these 
are  exposed,  when  so  many  secrets  sleep  in  nature ! 
Hence  the  necessity  of  speech  and  song ;  hence 


THE  POET.  43 

these  throbs  and  heart-beatings  in  the  orator,  at 
the  door  of  the  assembly,  to  the  end  namely  that 
thought  may  be  ejaculated  as  Logos,  or  Word. 

Doubt  not,  O  poet,  but  persist.  Say  '  It  is  in 
me,  and  shall  out.'  Stand  there,  balked  and  dumb, 
stuttering  and  stammering,  hissed  and  hooted,  stand 
and  strive,  until  at  last  rage  draw  out  of  thee  that 
cZream-power  which  every  night  shows  thee  is  thine 
own  ;  a  power  transcending  all  limit  and  privacy, 
and  by  virtue  of  which  a  man  is  the  conductor  of 
the  whole  river  of  electricity.  Nothing  walks,  or 
creeps,  or  grows,  or  exists,  which  must  not  in  turn 
arise  and  walk  before  him  as  exponent  of  his  mean 
ing.  Comes  he  to  that  power,  his  genius  is  no 
longer  exhaustible.  All  the  creatures  by  pairs  and 
by  tribes  pour  into  his  mind  as  into  a  Noah's  ark, 
to  come  forth  again  to  people  a  new  world.  This 
is  like  the  stock  of  air  for  our  respiration  or  for 
the  combustion  of  our  fireplace ;  not  a  measure  of 
gallons,  but  the  entire  atmosphere  if  wanted.  And 
therefore  the  rich  poets,  as  Homer,  Chaucer,  Shak- 
speare,  and  Raphael,  have  obviously  no  limits  to 
their  works  except  the  limits  of  their  lifetime,  and 
resemble  a  mirror  carried  through  the  street,  ready 
to  render  an  image  of  every  created  thing. 

O  poet !  a  new  nobility  is  conferred  in  groves 
and  pastures,  and  not  in  castles  or  by  the  sword- 
blade  any  longer.  The  conditions  are  hard,  but 


44  THE  POET. 

equal.  Thou  shalt  leave  the  world,  and  know  the 
muse  only.  Thou  shalt  not  know  any  longer  the 
times,  customs,  graces,  politics,  or  opinions  of  men, 
but  shalt  take  all  from  the  muse.  For  the  time  of 
towns  is  tolled  from  the  world  by  funereal  chimes, 
but  in  nature  the  universal  hours  are  counted  by 
succeeding  tribes  of  animals  and  plants,  and  by 
growth  of  joy  on  joy.  God  wills  also  that  thou  ab 
dicate  a  manifold  and  duplex  life,  and  that  thou  be 
content  that  others  speak  for  thee.  Others  shall 
be  thy  gentlemen  and  shall  represent  all  courtesy 
and  worldly  life  for  thee  ;  others  shall  do  the  great 
and  resounding  actions  also.  Thou  shalt  lie  close 
hid  with  nature,  and  canst  not  be  afforded  to  the 
Capitol  or  the  Exchange.  The  world  is  full  of  re 
nunciations  and  apprenticeships,  and  this  is  thine  ; 
thou  must  pass  for  a  fool  and  a  churl  for  a  long 
season.  This  is  the  screen  and  sheath  in  which 
Pan  has  protected  his  well-beloved  flower,  and  thou 
shalt  be  known  only  to  thine  own,  and  they  shall 
console  thee  with  tenderest  love.  ,  And  thou  shalt 
not  be  able  to  rehearse  the  names  of  thy  friends  in 
thy  verse,  for  an  old  shame  before  the  holy  ideal. 
And  this  is  the  reward ;  that  the  ideal  shall  be  real 
to  thee,  and  the  impressions  of  the  actual  world 
shall  fall  like  summer  rain,  copious,  but  not  trouble 
some  to  thy  invulnerable  essence.  Thou  shalt  have 
the  whole  land  for  thy  park  and  manor,  the  sea  for 


THE  POET.  45 

thy  bath  and  navigation,  without  tax  and  without 
envy;  the  woods  and  the  rivers  thou  shalt  own, 
and  thou  shalt  possess  that  wherein  others  are  only 
tenants  and  boarders.  Thou  true  land-lord !  sea- 
lord  !  air  -  lord  !  Wherever  snow  falls  or  water 
flows  or  birds  fly,  wherever  day  and  night  meet  in 
twilight,  wherever  the  blue  heaven  is  hung  by 
clouds  or  sown  with  stars,  wherever  are  forms  with 
transparent  boundaries,  wherever  are  outlets  into 
celestial  space,  wherever  is  danger,  and  awe,  and 
love,  —  there  is  Beauty,  plenteous  as  rain,  shed  for 
thee,  and  though  thou  shouldst  walk  the  world  over, 
thou  shalt  not  be  able  to  find  a  condition  inoppor 
tune  or  ignoble. 


EXPERIENCE. 


The  lords  of  life,  the  lords  of  life, — 
I  saw  them  pass, 
In  their  own  guise, 
Like  and  unlike, 
Portly  and  grim, 
Use  and  Surprise, 
Surface  and  Dream, 
Succession  swift,  and  spectral  Wrong, 
Temperament  without  a  tongue, 
And  the  inventor  of  the  game 
Omnipresent  without  name  ;  — 
Some  to  see,  some  to  be  guessed, 
They  marched  from  east  to  west : 
Little  man,  least  of  all, 
Among  the  legs  of  his  guardians  tall, 
Walked  about  with  puzzled  look  :  — 
Him  by  the  hand  dear  Nature  took ; 
Dearest  Nature,  strong  and  kind, 
Whispered,  '  Darling,  never  mind  ! 
To-morrow  they  will  wear  another  face, 
The  founder  thou !  these  are  thy  race ! ' 


n. 

EXPERIENCE. 


WHERE  do  we  find  ourselves?  In  a  series  of 
which  we  do  not  know  the  extremes,  and  believe 
that  it  has  none.  We  wake  and  find  ourselves  on 
a  stair ;  there  are  stairs  below  us,  which  we  seem 
to  have  ascended  ;  there  are  stairs  above  us,  many 
a  one,  which  go  upward  and  out  of  sight.  But  the 
Genius  wliich  according  to  the  old  belief  stands  at 
the  door  by  which  we  enter,  and  gives  us  the  lethe 
to  drink,  that  we  may  tell  no  tales,  mixed  the  cup 
too  strongly,  and  we  cannot  shake  off  the  lethargy 
now  at  noonday.  Sleep  lingers  all  our  lifetime 
about  our  eyes,  as  night  hovers  all  day  in  the  boughs 
of  the  fir-tree.  All  things  swim  and  glitter.  Our 
life  is  not  so  much  threatened  as  our  perception. 
Ghostlike  we  glide  through  nature,  and  should  not 
know  our  place  again.  Did  our  birth  fall  in  some 
fit  of  indigence  and  frugality  in  nature,  that  she 
was  so  sparing  of  her  fire  and  so  liberal  of  her  earth 
that  it  appears  to  us  that  we  lack  the  affirmative 
principle,  and  though  we  have  health  and  reason, 

VOL.  III.  4 


50  ILLUSION. 

yet  we  have  no  superfluity  of  spirit  for  new  creation? 
We  have  enough  to  live  and  bring  the  year  about, 
but  not  an  ounce  to  impart  or  to  invest.  Ah  that 
our  Genius  were  a  little  more  of  a  genius !  We  are 
like  millers  on  the  lower  levels  of  a  stream,  when 
the  factories  above  them  have  exhausted  the  water. 
We  too  fancy  that  the  upper  people  must  have  raised 
their  dams. 

If  any  of  us  knew  what  we  were  doing,  or  where 
we  are  going,  then  when  we  think  we  best  know ! 
We  do  not  know  to-day  whether  we  are  busy  or  idle. 
In  times  when  we  thought  ourselves  indolent,  we 
have  afterwards  discovered  that  much  was  accom 
plished  and  much  was  begun  in  us.  All  our  days  are 
L  so  unprofitable  while  they  pass,  that  't  is  wonderful 
where  or  when  we  ever  got  anything  of  this  which 
we  call  wisdom,  poetry,  virtue.  We  never  got  it 
on  any  dated  calendar  day.  Some  heavenly  days 
must  have  been  intercalated  somewhere,  like  those 
that  Hermes  won  with  dice  of  the  Moon,  that  Osiris 
might  be  born.  It  is  said  all  martyrdoms  looked 
mean  when  they  were  suffered.  Every  ship  is  a 
romantic  object,  except  that  we  sail  in.  Embark, 
and  the  romance  quits  our  vessel  and  hangs  on 
every  other  sail  in  the  horizon.  Our  life  looks 
trivial,  and  we  shun  to  record  it.  Men  seem  to 
have  learned  of  the  horizon  the  art  of  perpetual  re 
treating  and  reference.  4  Yonder  uplands  are  rich 


EXPERIENCE.  51 

pasturage,  and  my  neighbor  has  fertile  meadow, 
but  my  field,'  says  the  querulous  farmer, '  only  holds 
the  world  together.'  I  quote  another  man's  saying; 
unluckily  that  other  withdraws  himself  in  the  same 
way,  and  quotes  me.  'T  is  the  trick  of  nature  thus 
to  degrade  to-day ;  a  good  deal  of  buzz,  and  some 
where  a  result  slipped  magically  in.  Every  roof  is 
agreeable  to  the  eye  until  it  is  lifted ;  then  we  find 
tragedy  and  moaning  women  and  hard-eyed  hus 
bands  and  deluges  of  lethe,  and  the  men  ask^ 
'  What 's  the  news  ? '  as  if  the  old  were  so  bad. 
How  many  individuals  can  we  count  in  society?  how 
many  actions  ?  how  many  opinions  ?  So  much  of 
our  time  is  preparation,  so  much  is  routine,  and  so 
much  retrospect,  that  the  pith  of  each  man's  genius 
contracts  itself  to  a  very  few  hours.  The  history 
of  literature,  —  take  the  net  result  of  Tiraboschi, 
Warton,  or  Schlegel,  —  is  a  sum  of  very  few  ideas 
and  of  very  few  original  tales;  all  the  rest  being 
variation  of  these.  So  in  this  great  society  wide 
lying  around  us,  a  critical  analysis  would  find  very 
few  spontaneous  actions.  It  is  almost  all  custom 
and  gross  sense.  There  are  even  few  opinions,  and 
these  seem  organic  in  the  speakers,  and  do  not  dis 
turb  the  imiversal  necessity. 

What  opium  is  instilled  into  all  disaster!  It 
shows  formidable  as  we  approach  it,  but  there  is  at 
last  no  rough  rasping  friction,  but  the  most  slippery 


52  ILLUSION. 

sliding  surfaces;  we  fall  soft  on  a  thought;  Ate 
Dea  is  gentle,  — 

"  Over  men's  heads  walking  aloft, 
With  tender  feet  treading  so  soft." 

People  grieve  and  bemoan  themselves,  but  it  is  not 
half  so  bad  with  them  as  they  say.  There  are  moods 
in  which  we  court  suffering,  in  the  hope,  that  here 
at  least  we  shall  find  reality,  sharp  peaks  and  edges 
of  truth.  But  it  turns  out  to  be  scene-painting  and 
counterfeit.  The  only  thing  grief  has  taught  me  is 
to  know  how  shallow  it  is.  That,  like  all  the  rest, 
plays  about  the  surface,  and  never  introduces  me 
into  the  reality,  for  contact  with  which  we  would 
even  pay  the  costly  price  of  sons  and  lovers.  Was 
it  Boscovich  who  found  out  that  bodies  never  come 
in  contact  ?  ^  Well,  souls  never  touch  their  objects. 
An  innavigable  sea  washes  with  silent  waves  be 
tween  us  and  the  things  we  aim  at  and  converse 
with.  Grief  too  will  make  us  idealists.  In  the 
death  of  my  son,  now  more  than  two  years  ago,  I 
seem  to  have  1  i>st  a  beautiful  estate,  —  no  more.  I 
cannot  get  it  nearer  to  me.  If  to-morrow  I  should 
be  informed  of  the  bankruptcy  of  my  principal 
debtors,  the  loss  of  my  property  would  be  a  great 
inconvenience  to  me,  perhaps,  for  many  years  ;  but 
it  would  leave  me  as  it  found  me,  —  neither  better 
nor  worse.  So  is  it  with  this  calamity ;  it  does  not 


EXPERIENCE.  53 

touch  me  ;  something  which  I  fancied  was  a  part  of 
me,  which  could  not  be  torn  away  without  tear 
ing  me  nor  enlarged  without  enriching  me,  falls  off 
from  me  and  leaves  no  scar.  It  was  caducous.  I 
grieve  that  grief  can  teach  me  nothing,  nor  carry 
me  one  step  into  real  nature.  The  Indian  who  was 
laid  under  a  curse  that  the  wind  should  not  blow 
on  him,  nor  water  flow  to  him,  nor  fire  burn  him,  is 
a  type  of  us  all.  The  dearest  events  are  summer- 
rain,  and  we  the  Para  coats  that  shed  every  drop. 
Nothing  is  left  us  now  but  death.  We  look  to  that 
with  a  grim  satisfaction,  saying  There  at  least  is 
reality  that  will  not  dodge  us. 

I  take  this  evanescence  and  lubricity  of  all  ob 
jects,  which  lets  them  slip  through  our  fingers  then 
when  we  clutch  hardest,  to  be  the  most  unhand 
some  part  of  our  condition.  Nature  does  not  like 
to  be  observed,  and  likes  that  we  should  be  her 
fools  and  playmates.  We  may  have  the  sphere  for 
our  cricket-ball,  but  not  a  berry  for  our  philosophy. 
Direct  strokes  she  never  gave  us  power  to  make  ; 
all  our  blows  glance,  all  our  hits  are  accidents. 
Our  relations  to  each  other  are  oblique  and  cas 
ual. 

Dream  delivers  us  to  dream,  and  there  is  no  end 
to  illusion.  Life  is  a  train  of  moods  like  a  string 
of  beads,  and  as  we  pass  through  them  they  prove 


54  TEMPERAMENT. 

to  be  many-colored  lenses  which  paint  the  world 
their  own  hue,  and  each  shows  only  what  lies  in  its 
focus.  From  the  mountain  you  see  the  mountain. 
We  animate  what  we  can,  and  we  see  only  what 
we  animate.  Nature  and  books  belong  to  the  eyes 
that  see  them.  It  depends  on  the  mood  of  the 
man  whether  he  shall  see  the  sunset  or  the  fine 
poem.  There  are  always  sunsets,  and  there  is  al 
ways  genius  ;  but  only  a  few  hours  so  serene  that 
we  can  relish  nature  or  criticism.  The  more  or 
less  depends  on  structure  or  temperament.  Tem 
perament  is  the  iron  wire  on  which  the  beads  are 
strung.  Of  what  use  is  fortune  or  talent  to  a  cold 
and  defective  nature  ?  Who  cares  what  sensibility 
or  discrimination  a  man  has  at  some  time  shown,  if 
he  falls  asleep  in  his  chair  ?  or  if  he  laugh  and  gig 
gle?  or  if  he  apologize?  or  is  infected  with  ego 
tism?  or  thinks  of  his  dollar?  or  cannot  go  by  food  ? 
or  has  gotten  a  child  in  his  boyhood  ?  Of  what 
use  is  genius,  if  the  organ  is  too  convex  or  too  con 
cave  and  cannot  find  a  focal  distance  within  the 
actual  horizon  of  human  life  ?  Of  what  use,  if  the 
brain  is  too  cold  or  too  hot,  and  the  man  does  not 
care  enough  for  results  to  stimulate  him  to  experi 
ment,  and  hold  him  up  in  it  ?  or  if  the  web  is  too 
finely  woven,  too  irritable  by  pleasure  and  pain,  so 
that  life  stagnates  from  too  much  reception  without 
due  outlet?  Of  what  use  to  make  heroic  vows  of 


EXPEDIENCE.  55 

amendment,  if  the  same  old  law-breaker  is  to  keep 
them?  What  cheer  can  the  religious  sentiment 
yield,  when  that  is  suspected  to  be  secretly  depend 
ent  on  the  seasons  of  the  year  and  the  state  of  the 
blood  ?  I  knew  a  witty  physician  who  found  the 
creed  in  the  biliary  duct,  and  used  to  affirm  that  if 
there  was  disease  in  the  liver,  the  man  became  a 
Calvinist,  and  if  that  organ  was  sound,  he  became 
a  Unitarian.  Very  mortifying  is  the  reluctant  ex 
perience  that  some  unfriendly  excess  or  imbecility 
neutralizes  the  promise  of  genius.  We  see  young 
men  who  owe  us  a  new  world,  so  readily  and  lav 
ishly  they  promise,  but  they  never  acquit  the  debt ; 
they  die  young  and  dodge  the  account ;  or  if  they 
live  they  lose  themselves  in  the  crowd. 

Temperament  also  enters  fully  into  the  system 
of  illusions  and  shuts  us  in  a  prison  of  glass  which 
we  cannot  see.  There  is  an  optical  illusion  about 
every  person  we  meet.  In  truth  they  are  all  crea 
tures  of  given  temperament,  which  will  appear  in  a 
given  character,  whose  boundaries  they  will  never 
pass ;  but  we  look  at  them,  they  seem  alive,  and  we 
presume  there  is  impulse  in  them.  In  the  moment 
it  seems  impulse  ;  in  the  year,  in  the  lifetime,  it 
turns  out  to  be  a  certain  uniform  tune  which  the 
revolving  barrel  of  the  music-box  must  play.  Men 
resist  the  conclusion  in  the  morning,  but  adopt  it 
as  the  evening  wears  on,  that  temper  prevails  over 


56  TEMPERAMENT. 

everything  of  time,  place,  and  condition,  and  is  in 
consumable  in  the  flames  of  religion.  Some  modi 
fications  the  moral  sentiment  avails  to  impose,  but 
the  individual  texture  holds  its  dominion,  if  not  to 
bias  the  moral  judgments,  yet  to  fix  the  measure  of 
activity  and  of  enjoyment. 

I  thus  express  the  law  as  it  is  read  from  the  plat 
form  of  ordinary  life,  but  must  not  leave  it  without 
noticing  the  capital  exception.  For  temperament 
is  a  power  which  no  man  willingly  hears  any  one 
praise  but  himself.  On  the  platform  of  physics  we 
cannot  resist  the  contracting  influences  of  so-called 
science.  Temperament  puts  all  divinity  to  rout.  I 
know  the  mental  proclivity  of  physicians.  I  hear 
the  chuckle  of  the  phrenologists.  Theoretic  kid 
nappers  and  slave-drivers,  they  esteem  each  man 
the  victim  of  another,  who  winds  him  round  his 
finger  by  knowing  the  law  of  his  being ;  and,  by 
such  cheap  signboards  as  the  color  of  his  beard  or 
the  slope  of  his  occiput,  reads  the  inventory  of  his 
fortunes  and  character.  The  grossest  ignorance 
does  not  disgust  like  this  impudent  knowingness. 
The  physicians  say  they  are  not  materialists ;  but 
they  are :  —  Spirit  is  matter  reduced  to  an  extreme 
thinness :  O  so  thin  !  —  But  the  definition  of  spir 
itual  should  be,  that  which  is  its  own  evidence. 
What  notions  do  they  attach  to  love !  what  to  relig 
ion!  One  would  not  willingly  pronounce  these 


EXPERIENCE.  57 

words  in  their  hearing,  and  give  them  the  occasion 
to  profane  them.  I  saw  a  gracious  gentleman  who 
adapts  his  conversation  to  the  form  of  the  head  of 
the  man  he  talks  with !  I  had  fancied  that  the  value 
of  life  lay  in  its  inscrutable  possibilities ;  in  tho 
fact  that  I  never  know,  in  addressing  myself  to  a 
new  individual,  what  may  befall  me.  I  carry  the 
keys  of  my  castle  in  my  hand,  ready  to  throw  them 
at  the  feet  of  my  lord,  whenever  and  in  what  dis 
guise  soever  he  shall  appear.  I  know  he  is  in  the 
neighborhood,  hidden  among  vagabonds.  Shall  I 
preclude  my  future  by  taking  a  high  seat  and 
kindly  adapting  my  conversation  to  the  shape  of 
heads?  When  I  come  to  that,  the  doctors  shall 

buy  me  for  a  cent. '  But,  sir,  medical  history ; 

the  report  to  the  Institute  ;  the  proven  facts  ! '  -  -  I 
distrust  the  facts  and  the  inferences.  Tempera 
ment  is  the  veto  or  limitation-power  in  the  consti 
tution,  very  justly  applied  to  restrain  an  opposite 
excess  in  the  constitution,  but  absurdly  offered  as 
a  bar  to  original  equity.  When  virtue  is  in  pres 
ence,  all  subordinate  powers  sleep.  On  its  own 
level,  or  in  view  of  nature,  temperament  is  final.  I 
see  not,  if  one  be  once  caught  in  this  trap  of  so- 
called  sciences,  any  escape  for  the  man  from  the 
links  of  the  chain  of  physical  necessity.  Given 
such  an  embryo,  such  a  history  must  follow.  On 
this  platform  one  lives  in  a  sty  of  sensualism,  and 


58  SUCCESSION. 

would  soon  come  to  suicide.  But  it  is  impossible 
that  the  creative  power  should  exclude  itself.  Into 
every  intelligence  there  is  a  door  which  is  never 
closed,  through  which  the  creator  passes.  The  in 
tellect,  seeker  of  absolute  truth,  or  the  heart,  lover 
of  absolute  good,  intervenes  for  our  succor,  and  at 
one  whisper  of  these  high  powers  we  awake  from 
ineffectual  struggles  with  this  nightmare.  We  hurl 
it  into  its  own  hell,  and  cannot  again  contract  our 
selves  to  so  base  a  state. 

The  secret  of  the  illusoriness  is  in  the  necessity 
of  a  succession  of  moods  or  objects.  Gladly  we 
would  anchor,  but  the  anchorage  is  quicksand. 
This  onward  trick  of  nature  is  too  strong  for  us  : 
Pero  si  muove.  When  at  night  I  look  at  the 
moon  and  stars,  I  seem  stationary,  and  they  to 
hurry.  Our  love  of  the  real  draws  us  to  perma 
nence;  but  health  of  body  consists  in  circulation, 
and  sanity  of  mind  in  variety  or  facility  of  associa 
tion.  We  need  change  of  objects.  Dedication  to 
one  thought  is  quickly  odious.  We  house  with  the 
insane,  and  must  humor  them ;  then  conversation 
dies  out.  Once  I  took  such  delight  in  Montaigne 
that  I  thought  I  should  not  need  any  other  book  ; 
before  that,  in  Shakspeare ;  then  in  Plutarch ; 
then  in  Plotinus ;  at  one  time  in  Bacon ;  afterwards 
in  Goethe ;  even  in  Bettine  ;  but  now  I  turn  the 


EXPERIENCE.  59 

pages  of  either  of  them  languidly,  whilst  I  still 
cherish  their  genius.  So  with  pictures  ;  each  will 
bear  an  emphasis  of  attention  once,  which  it  cannot 
retain,  though  we  fain  would  continue  to  be  pleased 
in  that  manner.  How  strongly  I  have  felt  of  pic 
tures  that  when  you  have  seen  one  well,  you  must 
take  your  leave  of  it ;  you  shall  never  see  it  again. 
I  have  had  good  lessons  from  pictures  which  I  have 
since  seen  without  emotion  or  remark.  A  deduc 
tion  must  be  made  from  the  opinion  which  even  the 
wise  express  on  a  new  book  or  occurrence.  Their 
opinion  gives  me  tidings  of  their  mood,  and  some 
vague  guess  at  the  new  fact,  but  is  nowise  to  be 
trusted  as  the  lasting  relation  between  that  intellect 
and  that  thing.  The  child  asks,  'Mamma,  why 
don't  I  like  the  story  as  well  as  when  you  told  it 
rne  yesterday  ? '  Alas  !  child  it  is  even  so  with  the 
oldest  cherubim  of  knowledge.  But  will  it  answer 
thy  question  to  say,  Because  thou  wert  born  to  a 
whole  and  this  story  is  a  particular  ?  The  reason 
of  the  pain  this  discovery  causes  us  (and  we  make 
it  late  in  respect  to  works  of  art  and  intellect),  is 
the  plaint  of  tragedy  which  murmurs  from  it  in  re 
gard  to  persons,  to  friendship  and  love. 

That  immobility  and  absence  of  elasticity  which 
we  find  in  the  arts,  we  find  with  more  pain  in  the 
artist.  There  is  no  power  of  expansion  in  men. 
Our  friends  early  appear  to  us  as  representatives  of 


60  SUCCESSION. 

certain  ideas  which  they  never  pass  or  exceed. 
They  stand  on  the  brink  of  the  ocean  of  thought 
and  power,  but  they  never  take  the  single  step  that 
would  bring  them  there.  A  man  is  like  a  bit  of 
Labrador  spar,  which  has  no  lustre  as  you  turn  it 
in  your  hand  until  you  come  to  a  particular  angle ; 
then  it  shows  deep  and  beautiful  colors.  There  is 
no  adaptation  or  universal  applicability  in  men,  but 
each  has  his  special  talent,  and  the  mastery  of  suc 
cessful  men  consists  in  adroitly  keeping  themselves 
where  and  when  that  turn  shall  be  oftenest  to  be 
practised.  We  do  what  we  must,  and  call  it  by 
the  best  names  we  can,  and  would  fain  have  the 
praise  of  having  intended  the  result  which  ensues. 
I  cannot  recall  any  form  of  man  who  is  not  super 
fluous  sometimes.  But  is  not  this  pitiful  ?  Life  is 
not  worth  the  taking,  to  do  tricks  in. 

Of  cobrse  it  needs  the  whole  society  to  give  the 
symmetry  we  seek.  The  party-colored  wheel  must 
revolve  very  fast  to  appear  white.  Something  is 
earned  too  by  conversing  with  so  much  folly  and 
defect.  In  fine,  whoever  loses,  we  are  always  of 
the  gaining  party.  Divinity  is  behind  our  failures 
and  follies  also.  The  plays  of  children  are  non 
sense,  but  very  educative  nonsense.  So  it  is  with 
the  largest  and  solemnest  things,  with  commerce, 
government,  church,  marriage,  and  so  with  the  his 
tory  of  every  man's  bread,  and  the  ways  by  which 


EXPERIENCE.  61 

he  is  to  come  by  it.  Like  a  bird  which  alights  no 
where,  but  hops  perpetually  from  bough  to  bough, 
is  the  Power  which  abides  in  no  man  and  in  no 
woman,  but  for  a  moment  speaks  from  this  one,  and 
for  another  moment  from  that  one. 

But  what  help  from  these  fineries  or  pedantries  ? 
What  help  from  thought  ?  Life  is  not  dialectics. 
We,  I  think,  in  these  times,  have  had  lessons  enough 
of  the  futility  of  criticism.  Our  young  people  have 
thought  and  written  much  on  labor  and  reform,  and 
for  all  that  they  have  written,  neither  the  world  nor 
themselves  have  got  on  a  step.  Intellectual  tasting 
of  life  will  not  supersede  muscular  activity.  If  a 
man  should  consider  the  nicety  of  the  passage  of  a 
piece  of  bread  down  his  throat,  he  would  starve.  At 
Education-Farm  the  noblest  theory  of  life  sat  on 
the  noblest  figures  of  young  men  and  maidens,  quite 
powerless  and  melancholy.  It  would  not  rake  or 
pitch  a  ton  of  hay ;  it  would  not  rub  down  a  horse ; 
and  the  men  and  maidens  it  left  pale  and  hungry. 
A  political  orator  wittily  compared  our  party  prom 
ises  to  western  roads,  which  opened  stately  enough, 
with  planted  trees  on  either  side  to  tempt  the  trav 
eller,  but  soon  became  narrow  and  narrower  and 
ended  in  a  squirrel-track  and  ran  up  a  tree.  So 
does  culture  with  us;  it  ends  in  headache.  Un 
speakably  sad  and  barren  does  life  look  to  those 


62  SURFACE. 

who  a  few  months  ago  were  dazzled  with  the  splen 
dor  of  the  promise  of  the  times.  "  There  is  now 
no  longer  any  right  course  of  action  nor  any  self- 
devotion  left  among  the  Iranis."  Objections  and 
criticism  we  have  had  our  fill  of.  There  are  objec 
tions  to  every  course  of  life  and  action,  and  the 
practical  wisdom  infers  an  indifferency,  from  the 
omnipresence  of  objection.  The  whole  frame  of 
things  preaches  indifferency.  Do  not  craze  your 
self  with  thinking,  but  go  about  your  business  any 
where.  Life  is  not  intellectual  or  critical,  but 
sturdy.  Its  chief  good  is  for  well-mixed  people 
who  can  enjoy  what  they  find,  without  question. 
Nature  hates  peeping,  and  our  mothers  speak  her 
very  sense  when  they  say,  "Children,  eat  your  vict 
uals,  and  say  no  more  of  it."  To  fill  the  hour,  — 
that  is  happiness ;  to  fill  the  hour  and  leave  no  crev 
ice  for  a  repentance  or  an  approval.  We  live  amid 
surfaces,  and  the  true  art  of  life  is  to  skate  well  on 
them.  Under  the  oldest  mouldiest  conventions  a 
man  of  native  force  prospers  just  as  well  as  in  the 
newest  world,  and  that  by  skill  of  handling  and 
treatment.  He  can  take  hold  anywhere.  Life  it 
self  is  a  mixture  of  power  and  form,  and  will  not 
bear  the  least  excess  of  either.  To  finish  the  mo 
ment,  to  find  the  journey's  end  in  every  step  of  the 
road,  to  live  the  greatest  number  of  good  hours,  is 
wisdom.  It  is  not  the  part  of  men,  but  of  fanatics, . 


I 

EXPERIENCE.  63 

or  of  mathematicians  if  you  will,  to  say  that  the 
shortness  of  life  considered,  it  is  not  worth  caring 
whether  for  so  short  a  duration  we  were  sprawling 
in  want  or  sitting  high.  Since  our  office  is  with 
moments,  let  us  husband  them.  Five  minutes  of  to 
day  are  worth  as  much  to  me  as  five  minutes  in  the 
next  millennium.  Let  us  be  poised,  and  wise,  and 
our  own,  to-day.  Let  us  treat  the  men  and  women 
well ;  treat  them  as  if  they  were  real ;  perhaps  they 
are.  Men  live  in  their  fancy,  like  drunkards  whose 
hands  are  too  soft  and  tremulous  for  successful  la 
bor.  It  is  a  tempest  of  fancies,  and  the  only  bal 
last  I  know  is  a  respect  to  the  present  hour.  With 
out  any  shadow  of  doubt,  amidst  this  vertigo  of 
shows  and  politics,  I  settle  myself  ever  the  firmer  in 
the  creed  that  we  should  not  postpone  and  refer  and 
wish,  but  do  broad  justice  where  we  are,  by  whom 
soever  we  deal  with,  accepting  our  actual  compan 
ions  and  circumstances,  however  humble  or  odious, 
as  the  mystic  officials  to  whom  the  universe  has 
delegated  its  whole  pleasure  for  us.  If  these  are 
mean  and  malignant,  their  contentment,  which  is 
the  last  victory  of  justice,  is  a  more  satisfying  echo 
to  the  heart  than  the  voice  of  poets  and  the  casual 
sympathy  of  admirable  persons.  I  think  that  how 
ever  a  thoughtful  man  may  suffer  from  the  defects 
and  absurdities  of  his  company,  he  cannot  without 
affectation  deny  to  any  set  of  men  and  women  a 


64  SURFACE. 

sensibility  to  extraordinary  merit.  The  coarse  and 
frivolous  have  an  instinct  of  superiority,  if  they 
have  not  a  sympathy,  and  honor  it  in  their  blind  ca 
pricious  way  with  sincere  homage. 

The  fine  young  people  despise  life,  but  in  me, 
and  in  such  as  with  me  are  free  f rom  dxgp^rjsi^ ;  and 
to  whom  a  day  is  a  sound  and  solid  good,  it  is  a 
great  excess  of  politeness  to  look  scornful  and  to 
cry  for  company.  I  am  grown  by  sympathy  a  lit 
tle  eager  and  sentimental,  but  leave  me  alone  and 
I  should  relish  every  hour  and  what  it  brought  me, 
the  potluck  of  the  day,  as  heartily  as  the  oldest  gos 
sip  in  the  bar-room.  I  am  thankful  for  small  mer 
cies.  I  compared  notes  with  one  of  my  friends 
who  expects  everything  of  the  universe  and  is  dis 
appointed  when  anything  is  less  than  the  best,  and 
I  found  that  I  begin  at  the  other  extreme,  expecting 
nothing,  and  am  always  full  of  thanks  for  moderate 
goods.  I  accept  the  clangor  and  jangle  of  contrary 
tendencies.  I  find  my  account  in  sots  and  bores 
also.  They  give  a  reality  to  the  circumjacent  pic 
ture  which  such  a  vanishing  meteorous  appearance 
can  ill  spare.  In  the  morning  I  awake  and  find  the 
old  world,  wife,  babes,  and  mother,  Concord  and 
Boston,  the  dear  old  spiritual  world  and  even  the 
dear  old  devil  not  far  off.  If  we  will  take  the  good 
we  find,  asking  no  questions,  we  shall  have  heaping 
measures.  The  great  gifts  are  not  got  by  analysis. 


EXPERIENCE.  65 

Everything  good  is  on  the  highway.  The  middle 
region  of  our  being  is  the  temperate  zone.  We 
may  climb  into  the  thin  and  cold  realm  of  pure 
geometry  and  lifeless  science,  or  sink  into  that  of 
sensation.  Between  these  extremes  is  the  equator 
of  life,  of  thought,  of  spirit,  of  poetry,  —  a  narrow 
belt.  Moreover,  in  popular  experience  everything 
good  is  on  the  highway.  A  collector  peeps  into  all 
the  picture-shops  of  Europe  for  a  landscape  of  Pous- 
sin,  a  crayon-sketch  of  Salvator  ;  but  the  Transfig 
uration,  the  Last  Judgment,  the  Communion  of  St. 
Jerome,  and  what  are  as  transcendent  as  these,  are 
on -the  wajls  of  the  Vatican,  the  Uffizii,  or  the 
Louvre,  where  every  footman  may  see  them;  to 
say  nothing  of  Nature's  pictures  in  every  street,  of 
sunsets  and  sunrises  every  day,  and  the  sculpture  of 
the  human  body  never  absent.  A  collector  recently 
bought  at  public  auction,  in  London,  for  one  hun 
dred  and  fifty-seven  guineas,  an  autograph  of  Shak- 
speare ;  but  for  nothing  a  school-boy  can  read  Ham 
let  and  can  detect  secrets  of  highest  concernment 
yet  unpublished  therein.  I  think  I  will  never  read 
any  but  the  commonest  books,  —  the  Bible,  Homer, 
Dante,  Shakspeare,  and  Milton.  Then  we  are  im 
patient  of  so  public  a  life  and  planet,  and  run  hither 
and  thither  for  nooks  and  secrets.  The  imagination 
delights  in  the  woodcraft  of  Indians,  trappers,  and 
bee-hunters.  We  fancy  that  we  are  strangers,  and 


66  SURFACE. 

not  so  intimately  domesticated  in  the  planet  as  the 
wild  man  and  the  wild  beast  and  bird.  But  the  ex 
clusion  reaches  them  also ;  reaches  the  climbing,  fly 
ing,  gliding,  feathered  and  four-footed  man.  Fox 
and  woodchuck,  hawk  and  snipe  and  bittern,  when 
nearly  seen,  have  no  more  root  in  the  deep  world 
than  man,  and  are  just  such  superficial  tenants  of 
the  globe.  Then  the  new  molecular  philosophy 
shows  astronomical  interspaces  betwixt  atom  and 
atom,  shows  that  the  world  is  all  outside ;  it  has  no 
inside. 

The  mid-world  is  best.  Nature,  as  we  know  her, 
is  no  saint.  The  lights  of  the  church,  the  ascetics, 
Gentoos,  and  corn-eaters,  she  does  not  distinguish 
by  any  favor.  She  comes  eating  and  drinking  and 
sinning.  Her  darlings,  the  great,  the  strong,  the 
beautiful,  are  not  children  of  our  law  ;  do  not  come 
out  of  the  Sunday  School,  nor  weigh  their  food, 
nor  punctually  keep  the  commandments.  If  we 
will  be  strong  with  her  strength  we  must  not  har 
bor  such  disconsolate  consciences,  borrowed  too 
from  the  consciences  of  other  nations.  We  must 
set  up  the  strong  present  tense  against  all  the  ru 
mors  of  wrath,  past  or  to  come.  So  many  things 
are  unsettled  which  it  is  of  the  first  importance  to 
settle ;  —  and,  pending  their  settlement,  we  will  do 
as  we  do.  Whilst  the  debate  goes  forward  on  the 
equity  of  commerce,  and  will  not  be  closed  for  a 


EXPERIENCE.  67 

century  or  two,  New  and  Old  England  may  keep 
shop.  Law  of  copyright  and  international  copy 
right  is  to  be  discussed,  and  in  the  interim  we  will 
sell  our  books  for  the  most  we  can.  Expediency  of 
literature,  reason  of  literature,  lawfulness  of  writ 
ing  down  a  thought,  is  questioned  ;  much  is  to  say 
on  both  sides,  and,  while  the  fight  waxes  hot,  thou, 
dearest  scholar,  stick  to  thy  foolish  task,  add  a  line 
every  hour,  and  between  whiles  add  a  line.  Right 
to  hold  land,  right  of  property,  is  disputed,  and 
the  conventions  convene,  and  before  the  vote  is 
taken,  dig  away  in  your  garden,  and  spend  your 
earnings  as  a  waif  or  godsend  to  all  serene  and 
beautiful  purposes.  Life  itself  is  a  bubble  and  a 
skepticism,  and  a  sleep  within  a  sleep.  Grant  it, 
and  as  much  more  as  they  will,  —  but  thou,  God's 
darling  !  heed  thy  private  dream ;  thou  wilt  not  be 
missed  in  the  scorning  and  skepticism ;  there  are 
enough  of  them  ;  stay  there  in  thy  closet  and  toil 
until  the  rest  are  agreed  what  to  do  about  it.  Thy 
sickness,  they  say,  and  thy  puny  habit  require  that 
thou  do  this  or  avoid  that,  but  know  that  thy  life 
is  a  flitting  state,  a  tent  for  a  night,  and  do  thou, 
sick  or  well,  finish  that  stint.  Thou  art  sick,  but 
shalt  not  be  worse,  and  the  universe,  which  holds 
thee  dear,  shall  be  the  better. 

Human  life  is  made  up  of  the  two  elements, 
power  and  form,  and  the  proportion  must  be  inva- 


68  SURFACE. 

riably  kept  if  we  would  have  it  sweet  and  sound. 
Each  of  these  elements  in  excess  makes  a  mischief 
as  hurtful  as  its  defect.  Everything  runs  to  ex 
cess  ;  every  good  quality  is  noxious  if  unmixed, 
and,  to  carry  the  danger  to  the  edge  of  ruin,  na 
ture  causes  each  man's  peculiarity  to  superabouncl. 
•/  Here,  among  the  farms,  we  adduce  the  scholars  as 
examples  of  this  treachery.  They  are  nature's  vic 
tims  of  expression.  You  who  see  the  artist,  the 
orator,  the  poet,  too  near,  and  find  their  life  no 
more  excellent  than  that  of  mechanics  or  farm 
ers,  and  themselves  victims  of  partiality,  very  hol 
low  and  haggard,  and  pronounce  them  failures,  not 
heroes,  but  quacks,  —  conclude  very  reasonably 
that  these  arts  are  not  for  man,  but  are  disease. 
Yet  nature  will  not  bear  you  out.  Irresistible  na 
ture  made  men  such,  and  makes  legions  more  of 
such,  every  day.  You  love  the  boy  reading  in  a 
book,  gazing  at  a  drawing  or  a  cast ;  yet  what  are 
these  millions  who  read  and  behold,  but  incipient 
writers  and  sculptors  ?  Add  a  little  more  of  that 
quality  which  now  reads  and  sees,  and  they  will 
seize  the  pen  and  chisel.  And  if  one  remembers 
how  innocently  he  began  to  be  an  artist,  he  per 
ceives  that  nature  joined  with  his  enemy.  A  man 
is  a  golden  impossibility.  The  line  he  must  walk 
is  a  hair's  breadth.  The  wise  through  excess  of 
wisdom  is  made  a  fool. 


•c, 


EXPERIENCE. 

How  easily,  if  fate  would  suffer  it,  we  might 
keep  forever  these  beautiful  Vrnits,  and  adjust  our 
selves,  once  for  all,  to  the  feet  calculation  of  the 
kingdom  of  known  cause  effect.  In  the  street 

and  in  the  newspapers,  life  ap^v  irs  so  plain  a  busi 
ness  that  manly  resolution  and  adherence  to  the 
multiplication-table  throtigh  all  weathers  will  in 
sure  success.  But  ah !  presently  comes  a  day,  or  is 
it  only  a  half -hour,  with  its  angel- whispering,  — 
which  discomfits  the  conclusions  of  nations  and  of 
years!  To-morrow  again  every  thing  looks  real 
and  angular,  the  habitual  standards  are  reinstated, 
common  sense  is  as  rare  as  genius,  —  is  the  basis 
of  genius,  and  experience  is  hands  and  feet  to  every 
enterprise ;  —  and  yet,  he  who  should  do  his  busi 
ness  on  this  understanding  would  be  quickly  bank 
rupt.  Power  keeps  quite  another  road  than  the 
turnpikes  of  choice  and  will ;  namely  the  subterra 
nean  and  invisible  tunnels  and  channels  of  life.  It 
is  ridiculous  that  we  are  diplomatists,  and  doctors, 
and  considerate  people ;  there  are  no  dupes  like 
these.  Life  is  a  series  of  surprises,  and  would  not 
be  worth  taking  or  keeping  if  it  were  not.  God ' 
delights  to  isolate  us  every  day,  and  hide  from  us 
the  past  and  the  future.  We  would  look  about  us, 
but  with  grand  politeness  he  draws  down  before  us 
an  impenetrable  screen  of  purest  sky,  and  another 
behind  us  of  purest  sky.  '  You  will  not  remember,' 


70  SURPRISE. 

he  seems  to  say,  '  and  you  will  not  expect.'  All 
good  conversation,  manners,  and  action,  come  from 
a  spontaneity  which  forgets  usages  and  makes  the 
moment  great.  Nature  hates  calculators  ;  her 
methods  are  saltatory  and  impulsive.  Man  lives 
by  pulses  ;  our  organic  movements  are  such  ;  and 
the  chemical  and  ethereal  agents  are  undulatory 
and  alternate  ;  and  the  mind  goes  antagonizing  on, 
and  never  prospers  but  by  fits.  We  thrive  by  cas 
ualties.  Our  chief  experiences  have  been  casual. 
The  most  attractive  class  of  people  are  those  who 
are  powerful  obliquely  and  not  by  the  direct  stroke ; 
men  of  genius,  but  not  yet  accredited ;  one  gets  the 
cheer  of  their  light  without  paying  too  great  a  tax. 
Theirs  is  the  beauty  of  the  bird  or  the  morning 
light,  and  not  of  art.  In  the  thought  of  genius 
there  is  always  a  surprise ;  and  the  moral  sentiment 
is  well  called  "  the  newness,"  for  it  is  never  other  ; 
as  new  to  the  oldest  intelligence  as  to  the  young 
child  ;  —  "  the  kingdom  that  cometh  without  obser 
vation."  In  like  manner,  for  practical  success, 
there  must  not  be  too  much  design.  A  man  will 
not  be  observed  in  doing  that  which  he  can  do 
best.  There  is  a  certain  magic  about  his  properest 
action  which  stupefies  your  powers  of  observation, 
so  that  though  it  is  done  before  you,  you  wist  not 
of  it.  The  art  of  life  has  a  pudency,  and  will  not 
be  exposed.  Every  man  is  an  impossibility  until 


EXPERIENCE.  71 

he  is  born  ;  every  thing  impossible  until  we  see  a 
success.  The  ardors  of  piety  agree  at  last  with  the 
coldest  skepticism,  —  that  northing  is  of  us  or  our 
works,  —  that  all  is  of  God.  Nature  will  not  spare 
us  the  smallest  leaf  of  laurel.  All  writing  comes 
by  the  grace  of  God,  and  all  doing  and  having.  I 
would  gladly  be  moral  and  keep  due  metes  and 
bounds,  which  I  dearly  love,  and  allow  the  most  to 
the  will  of  man ;  but  1  have  set  rny  heart  on  honesty 
in  this  chapter,  and  I  can  see  nothing  at  last,  in 
success  or  failure,  than  more  or  less  of  vital  force 
supplied  from  the  Eternal.  The  results  of  life  are 
uncalculated  and  uncalculable.  The  years  teach 
much  which  the  days  never  know.  The  persons 
who  compose  our  company,  converse,  and  come  and 
go,  and  design  and  execute  many  things,  and  some 
what  comes  of  it  all,  but  an  unlooked-for  result. 
The  individual  is  always  mistaken.  Pie  designed 
many  things,  and  drew  in  other  persons  as  coadju 
tors,  quarrelled  with  some  or  all,  blundered  much, 
and  something  is  done ;  all  are  a  little  advanced, 
but  the  individual  is  always  mistaken.  It  turns 
out  somewhat  new  and  very  unlike  what  he  prom 
ised  himself. 

The  ancients,  struck  with  this  irreducibleness  of 
the  elements  of  human  life  to  calculation,  exalted 
Chance  into  a  divinity  ;  but  that  is  to  stay  too  long 


72  REALITY. 

at  the  spark,  which  glitters  truly  at  one  point,  but 
the  universe  is  warm  with  the  latency  of  the  same 
fire.  The  miracle  of  life  which  will  not  be  ex 
pounded  but  will  remain  a  miracle,  introduces  a 
new  element.  In  the  growth  of  the  embryo,  Sir 
Everard  Home  I  think  noticed  that  the  evolution 
was  not  from  one  central  point,  but  coactive  from 
three  or  more  points.  Life  has  no  memory.  That 
which  proceeds  in  succession  might  be  remembered, 
but  that  which  is  coexistent,  or  ejaculated  from  a 
deeper  cause,  as  yet  far  from  being  conscious, 
knows  not  its  own  tendency.  So  is  it  with  us,  now 
skeptical  or  without  unity,  because  immersed  in 
forms  and  effects  all  seeming  to  be  of  equal  yet 
hostile  value,  and  now  religious,  whilst  in  the  re 
ception  of  spiritual  law.  Bear  with  these  distrac 
tions,  with  this  coetaneous  growth  of  the  parts; 
they  will  one  day  be  members,  and  obey  one  will. 
On  that  one  will,  on  that  secret  cause,  they  nail  our 
attention  and  hope.  Life  is  hereby  melted  into  an 
expectation  or  a  religion.  Underneath  the  inhar 
monious  and  trivial  particulars,  is  a  musical  per 
fection  ;  the  Ideal  journeying  always  with  us,  the 
heaven  without  rent  or  seam.  Do  but  observe  the 
mode  of  our  illumination.  When  I  converse  with 
a  profound  mind,  or  if  at  any  time  being  alone  I 
have  good  thoughts,  I  do  not  at  once  arrive  at  sat 
isfactions,  as  when,  being  thirsty,  I  drink  water ;  or 


EXPERIENCE.  73 

go  to  the  fire,  being  cold ;  no !  but  I  am  at  first  ap 
prised  of  my  vicinity  to  a  new  and  excellent  region 
of  life.  By  persisting  to  read  or  to  think,  this  re 
gion  gives  further  sign  of  itself,  as  it  were  in 
flashes  of  light,  in  sudden  discoveries  of  its  pro 
found  beauty  and  repose,  as  if  the  clouds  that  cov 
ered  it  parted  at  intervals  and  showed  the  ap 
proaching  traveller  the  inland  mountains,  with  the 
tranquil  eternal  meadows  spread  at  their  base, 
whereon  flocks  graze  and  shepherds  pipe  and  dance. 
But  every  insight  from  this  realm  of  thought  is 
felt  as  initial,  and  promises  a  sequel.  I  do  not 
make  it ;  I  arrive  there,  and  behold  what  was  there 
already.  I  make !  O  no  !  I  clap  my  hands  in 
infantine  joy  and  amazement  before  the  first  open 
ing  to  me  of  this  august  magnificence,  old  with  the 
love  and  homage  of  innumerable  ages,  young  with 
the  life  of  life,  the  sunbright  Mecca  of  the  desert. 
And  what  a  future  it  opens  !  I  feel  a  new  heart 
beating  with  the  love  of  the  new  beauty.  I  am 
ready  to  die  out  of  nature  and  be  born  again  into 
this  new  yet  unapproachable  America  I  have  found 
in  the  West :  — 

"  Since  neither  now  nor  yesterday  began 
These  thoughts,  which  have  been  ever,  nor  yet  can 
A  man  be  found  who  their  first  entrance  knew." 

If  I  have  described  life  as  a  flux  of  moods,  I  must 
now  add  that  there  is  that  in  us  which  changes  not 


74  REALITY. 

and  which  ranks  all  sensations  and  states  of  mind. 
The  consciousness  in  each  man  is  a  sliding  scale, 
which  identifies  him  now  with  the  First  Cause,  and 
now  with  the  flesh  of  his  body ;  life  above  life,  in 
infinite  degrees.  The  sentiment  from  which  it 
sprung  determines  the  dignity  of  any  deed,  and  the 
question  ever  is,  not  what  you  have  done  or  for 
borne,  but  at  whose  command  you  have  done  or  for 
borne  it. 

Fortune,  Minerva,  Muse,  Holy  Ghost,  —  these 
are  quaint  names,  too  narrow  to  cover  this  un 
bounded  substance.  The  baffled  intellect  must  still 
kneel  before  this  cause,  which  refuses  to  be  named, 
—  ineffable  cause,  which  every  fine  genius  has  es 
sayed  to  represent  by  some  emphatic  symbol,  as, 
Thales  by  water,  Anaximenes  by  air,  Anaxagoras 
by  (Nous)  thought,  Zoroaster  by  fire,  Jesus  and  the 
moderns  by  love;  and  the  metaphor  of  each  has 
become  a  national  religion.  The  Chinese  Mencius 
has  not  been  the  least  successful  in  his  generali 
zation.  "I  fully  understand  language,"  he  said, 
"  and  nourish  well  my  vast-flowing  vigor."  —  "I 
beg  to  ask  what  you  call  vast-flowing  vigor  ?  " 
said  his  companion.  "The  explanation,"  replied 
Mencius,  "is  difficult.  This  vigor  is  supremely 
great,  and  in  the  highest  degree  unbending.  Nour 
ish  it  correctly  and  do  it  no  injury,  and  it  will  fill 
up  the  vacancy  between  heaven  and  earth.  This 


EXPERIENCE.  75 

vigor  accords  with  and  assists  justice  and  reason, 
and  leaves  no  hunger."  — In  our  more  correct  writ 
ing  we  give  to  this  generalization  the  name  of  Be 
ing,  and  thereby  confess  that  we  have  arrived  as  far 
as  we  can  go.  Suffice  it  for  the  joy  of  the  universe 
that  we  have  npt  arrived  at  a  wall,  but  at  intermi 
nable  oceans,  f  Our  life  seems  not  present  so  much 
as  prospective;  not  for  the  affairs  on  which  it  is 
wasted,  but  as  a  hint  of  this  vast-flowing  vigor. 
Most  of  life  seems  to  be  mere  advertisement  of  fac 
ulty  ;  information  is  given  us  not  to  sell  ourselves 
cheap  ;  that  we  are  very  great.  So,  in  particulars, 
our  greatness  is  always  in  a  tendency  or  direction, 
not  in  an  action.  It  is  for  us  to  believe  in  the  rule, 
not  in  the  exception.  The  noble  are  thus  known 
from  the  ignoble.  So  in  accepting  the  leading  of 
the  sentiments,  it  is  not  what  we  believe  concerning 
the  immortality  of  the  soul  or  the  like,  but  the  uni 
versal  impulse  to  believe,  that  is  the  material  cir 
cumstance  and  is  the  principal  fact  in  the  history 
of  the  globe.  I  Shall  we  describe  this  cause  as  that 
which  works  directly  ?  The  spirit  is  not  helpless 
or  needful  of  mediate  organs.  It  has  plentiful 
powers  and  direct  effects.  I  am  explained  without 
explaining,  I  am  -felt  without  acting,  and  where  I 
am  not.  Therefore  all  just  persons  are  satisfied 
with  their  own  praise.  They  refuse  to  explain 
themselves,  and  are  content  that  new  actions  should 


76  REALITY. 

do  them  that  office.  They  believe  that  we  com- 
municate  without  speech  and  above  speech,  and 
that  no  right  action  of  ours  is  quite  unaffeeting  to 
our  friends,  at  whatever  distance  ;  for  the  influence 
of  action  is  not  to  be  measured  by  miles.  Why 
should  I  fret  myself  because  a  circumstance  has 
occurred  which  hinders  my  presence  where  I  was 
expected  ?  If  I  am  not  at  the  meeting,  my  pres 
ence  where  I  am  should  be  as  useful  to  the  com 
monwealth  of  friendship  and  wisdom,  as  would  be 
my  presence  in  that  place.  I  exert  the  same  qual 
ity  of  power  in  all  places.  Thus  journeys  the 
mighty  Ideal  before  us  ;  it  never  was  known  to  fall 
into  the  rear.  No  man  ever  came  to  an  experience 
which  was  satiating,  but  his  good  is  tidings  of  a 
better.  Onward  and  onward  !  In  liberated  mo 
ments  we  know  that  a  new  picture  of  life  and  duty 
is  already  possible  ;  the  elements  already  exist  in 
many  minds  around  you  of  a  doctrine  of  life  which 
shall  transcend  any  written  record  we  have.  The 
new  statement  will  comprise  the  skepticisms  as  well 
as  the  faiths  of  society,  and  out  of  unbeliefs  a  creed 
shall  be  formed.  For  skepticisms  are  not  gratui 
tous  or  lawless,  but  are  limitations  of  the  affirma 
tive  statement,  and  the  new  philosophy  must  take 
them  in  and  make  affirmations  outside  of  them, 
just  as  much  as  it  must  include  the  oldest  beliefs. 
It  is  very  unhappy,  but  too  late  to  be  helped,  the 


EXPERIENCE.  77 

discovery  we  have  made  that  we  exist.  That  dis 
covery  is  called  the  Fall  of  Man.  Ever  afterwards 
we  suspect  our  instruments.  We  have  learned  that 
we  do  not  see  directly,  but  mediately,  and  that  we 
have  no  means  of  correcting  these  colored  and  dis 
torting  lenses  which  we  are,  or  of  computing  the 
amount  of  their  errors.  Perhaps  these  subject- 
lenses  have  a  creative  power ;  perhaps  there  are  no 
objects.  Once  we  lived  in  what  we  saw  ;  now,  the 
rapaciousness  of  this  new  power,  which  threatens 
to  absorb  all  things,  engages  us.  Nature,  art,  per 
sons,  letters,  religions,  objects,  successively  tumble 
in,  and  God  is  but  one  of  its  ideas.  Nature  and 
literature  are  subjective  phenomena ;  every  evil  and 
every  good  thing  is  a  shadow  which  we  cast.  The 
street  is  full  of  humiliations  to  the  proud.  As  the 
fop  contrived  to  dress  his  bailiffs  in  his  livery  and 
make  them  wait  on  his  guests  at  table,  so  the  cha 
grins  which  the  bad  heart  gives  off  as  bubbles,  at 
once  take  form  as  ladies  and  gentlemen  in  the 
street,  shopmen  or  bar-keepers  in  hotels,  and 
threaten  or  insult  whatever  is  threatenable  and 
insultable  in  us.  'T  is  the  same  with  our  idolatries. 
People  forget  that  it  is  the  eye  which  makes  the 
horizon,  and  the  rounding  mind's  eye  which  makes 
this  or  that  man  a  type  or  representative  of  human 
ity,  with  the  name  of  hero  or  saint.  Jesus,  the 
"providential  man,"  is  a  good  man  on  whom  many 


78  SUBJECT  OR   THE  ONE. 

people  are  agreed  that  these  optical  laws  shall  take 
effect.  By  love  on  one  part  and  by  forbearance  to 
press  objection  on  the  other  part,  it  is  for  a  time 
settled  that  we  will  look  at  him  in  the  centre  of  the 
horizon,  and  ascribe  to  him  the  properties  that  will 
attach  to  any  man  so  seen.  But  the  longest  love? 
or  aversion  has  a  speedy  term.  The  great  and 
crescive  self,  rooted  in  absolute  nature,  supplants 
all  relative  existence  and  ruins  the  kingdom  of 
mortal  friendship  and  love.  Marriage  (in  what  is 
called  the  spiritual  world)  is  impossible,  because  of 
the  inequality  between  every  subject  and  every  ob 
ject.  The  subject  is  the  receiver  of  Godhead,  and 
at  every  comparison  must  feel  his  being  enhanced 
by  that  cryptic  might.  Though  not  in  energy,  yet 
by  presence,  this  magazine  of  substance  cannot  be 
otherwise  than  felt ;  nor  can  any  force  of  intellect 
attribute  to  the  object  the  proper  deity  which  sleeps 
or  wakes  forever  in  every  subject.  Never  can  love 
make  consciousness  and  ascription  equal  in  force. 
There  will  be  the  same  gulf  between  every  me 
and  thee  as  between  the  original  and  the  picture. 
The  universe  is  the  bride  of  the  soul.  All  pri 
vate  sympathy  is  partial.  Two  human  beings  are 
like  globes,  which  can  touch  only  in  a  point,  and 
whilst  they  remain  in  contact  all  other  points  of 
each  of  the  spheres  are  inert ;  their  turn  must 
also  come,  and  the  longer  a  particular  union  lasts 


EXPERIENCE.  79 

the  more  energy  of  appetency  the  parts  not  in  union 
acquire. 

Life  will  be  imaged,  but  cannot  be  divided  nor 
doubled.  Any  invasion  of  its  unity  would  be 
chaos.  The  soul  is  not  twin-born  but  the  only 
begotten,  and  though  revealing  itself  as  child  in 
time,  child  in  appearance,  is  of  a  fatal  and  univer 
sal  power,  admitting  no  co-life.  Every  day,  every 
act  betrays  the  ill-concealed  deity.  We  believe  in 
ourselves  as  we  do  not  believe  in  others.  We  per 
mit  all  things  to  ourselves,  and  that  which  we  call 
sin  in  others  is  experiment  for  us.  It  is  an  in 
stance  of  our  faith  in  ourselves  that  men  never 
speak  of  crime  as  lightly  as  they  think  ;  or  every 
man  thinks  a  latitude  safe  for  himself  which  is  110- 
wise  to  be  indulged  to  another.  The  act  looks  very 
differently  on  the  inside  and  on  the  outside  ;  in  its 
quality  and  in  its  consequences.  Murder  in  the 
murderer  is  no  such  ruinous  thought  as  poets  and 
romancers  will  have  it ;  it  does  not  unsettle  him  or 
fright  him  from  his  ordinary  notice  of  trifles  ;  it  is 
an  act  quite  easy  to  be  contemplated  ;  but  in  its 
sequel  it  turns  out  to  be  a  horrible  jangle  and  con 
founding  of  all  relations.  Especially  the  crimes 
that  spring  from  love  seem  right  and  fair  from 
the  actor's  point  of  view,  but  when  acted  are  found 
destructive  of  society.  No  man  at  last  believes 
that  he  can  be  lost,  or  that  the  crime  in  him  is  as 


80  SUBJECT  OR  THE  ONE. 

black  as  in  the  felon.  Because  the  intellect  qual 
ifies  in  our  own  case  the  moral  judgments.  For 
there  is  no  crime  to  the  intellect.  That  is  aiitino- 
mian  or  hypernomian,  and  judges  law  as  well  as 
fact.  "  It  is  worse  than  a  crime,  it  is  a  blunder," 
said  Napoleon,  speaking  the  language  of  the  intel 
lect.  To  it,  the  world  is  a  problem  in  mathematics 
or  the  science  of  quantity,  and  it  leaves  out  praise 
and  blame  and  all  weak  emotions.  All  stealing  is 
comparative.  If  you  come  to  absolutes,  pray  who 
does  not  steal  ?  Saints  are  sad,  because  they  behold 
sin  (even  when  they  speculate),  from  the  point  of 
view  of  the  conscience,  and  not  of  the  intellect ;  a 
confusion  of  thought.  Sin,  seen  from  the  thought, 
is  a  diminution,  or  less  ;  seen  from  the  conscience 
or  will,  it  is  pravity  or  ~bad.  The  intellect  names 
it  shade,  absence  of  light,  and  no  essence.  The 
conscience  must  feel  it  as  essence,  essential  evil. 
This  it  is  not ;  it  has  an  objective  existence,  but  no 
subjective. 

Thus  inevitably  does  the  universe  wear  our  color, 
and  every  object  fall  successively  into  the  subject 
itself.  The  subject  exists,  the  subject  enlarges ;  all 
things  sooner  or  later  fall  into  place.  As  I  am,  so 
I  see ;  use  what  language  we  will,  we  can  never  say 
anything  but  what  we  are ;  Hermes,  Cadmus,  Co 
lumbus,  Newton,  Bonaparte,  are  the  mind's  minis 
ters.  Instead  of  feeling  a  poverty  when  we  encoun- 


EXPERIENCE.  81 

ter  a  great  man,  let  us  treat  the  new  comer  like  a 
travelling  geologist  who  passes  through  our  estate 
and  shows  us  good  slate,  or  limestone,  or  anthracite, 
in  our  brush  pasture.  The  partial  action  of  each 
strong  mind  in  one  direction  is  a  telescope  for  the 
objects  on  which  it  is  pointed.  But  every  other 
part  of  knowledge  is  to  be  pushed  to  the  same  ex 
travagance,  ere  the  soul  attains  her  due  sphericity. 
Do  you  see  that  kitten  chasing  so  prettily  her  own 
tail  ?  If  you  could  look  with  her  eyes  you  might 
see  her  surrounded  with  hundreds  of  figures  per 
forming  complex  dramas,  with  tragic  and  comic  is 
sues,  long  conversations,  many  characters,  many  ups 
and  downs  of  fate,  —  and  meantime  it  is  only  puss 
and  her  tail.  How  long  before  our  masquerade  will 
end  its  noise  of  tambourines,  laughter,  and  shout 
ing,  and  we  shall  find  it  was  a  solitary  performance  ? 
A  subject  and  an  object,  —  it  takes  so  much  to 
make  the  galvanic  circuit  complete,  but  magnitude 
adds  nothing.  What  imports  it  whether  it  is  Kep 
ler  and  the  sphere,  Columbus  and  America,  a  reader 
and  his  book,  or  puss  with  her  tail  ? 

It  is  true  that  all  the  muses  and  love  and  religion 
hate  these  developments,  and  will  find  a  way  to 
punish  the  chemist  who  publishes  in  the  parlor  the 
secrets  of  the  laboratory.  And  we  cannot  say  too 
little  of  oar  constitutional  necessity  of  seeing  things 
under  private  aspects,  or  saturated  with  our  humors. 


82  SUBJECT  OR   THE  ONE. 

And  yet  is  the  God  the  native  of  these  bleak  rocks. 
That  need  makes  in  morals  the  capital  virtue  of 
self-trust.  We  must  hold  hard  to  this  poverty,  how 
ever  scandalous,  and  by  more  vigorous  self -recover 
ies,  after  the  sallies  of  action,  possess  our  axis  more 
firmly.  The  life  of  truth  is  cold  and  so  far  mourn 
ful  ;  but  it  is  not  the  slave  of  tears,  contritions  and 
perturbations.  It  does  not  attempt  another's  work, 
nor  adopt  another's  facts.  It  is  a  main  lesson  of 
wisdom  to  know  your  own  from  another's.  I  have 
learned  that  I  cannot  dispose  of  other  people's 
facts  ;  but  I  possess  such  a  key  to  my  own  as  per 
suades  me,  against  all  their  denials,  that  they  also 
have  a  key  to  theirs.  A  sympathetic  person  is 
placed  in  the  dilemma  of  a  swimmer  among  drown 
ing  men,  who  all  catch  at  him,  and  if  he  give  so 
much  as  a  leg  or  a  ringer  they  will  drown  him. 
They  wish  to  be  saved  from  the  mischiefs  of  their 
vices,  but  not  from  their  vices.  Charity  would  be 
wasted  on  this  poor  waiting  on  the  symptoms.  A 
wise  and  hardy  physician  will  say,  Come  out  of 
tliat,  as  the  first  condition  of  advice. 

In  this  our  talking  America  we  are  ruined  by  our 
good  nature  and  listening  on  all  sides.  This  com 
pliance  takes  away  the  power  of  being  greatly  use 
ful.  A  man  should  not  be  able  to  look  other  than 
directly  and  forthright.  A  preoccupied  attention 
is  the  only  answer  to  the  importunate  frivolity  of 


EXPERIENCE.  83 

other  people;  an  attention,  and  to  an  aim  which 
makes  their  wants  frivolous.  This  is  a  divine  an 
swer,  and  leaves  no  appeal  and  no  hard  thoughts. 
In  Flaxman's  drawing  of  the  Eumenides  of  .ZEschy- 
lus,  Orestes  supplicates  Apollo,  whilst  the  Furies 
sleep  on  the  threshold.  The  face  of  the  god  ex 
presses  a  shade  of  regret  and  compassion,  but  is  calm 
with  the  conviction  of  the  irreconcilableness  of  the 
two  spheres.  He  is  born  into  other  politics,  into 
the  eternal  and  beautiful.  The  man  at  his  feet  asks 
for  his  interest  in  turmoils  of  the  earth,  into  which 
his  nature  cannot  enter.  And  the  Eumenides  there 
lying  express  pictorially  this  disparity.  The  god  is 
surcharged  with  his  divine  destiny. 

Illusion,  Temperament,  Succession,  Surface,  Sur 
prise,  Reality,  Subjectiveness,  —  these  are  threads 
on  the  loom  of  time,  these  are  the  lords  of  life.  I 
dare  not  assume  to  give  their  order,  but  I  name 
them  as  I  find  them  in  my  way.  I  know  better  than 
to  claim  any  completeness  for  my  picture.  I  am  a 
fragment,  and  this  is  a  fragment  of  me.  I  can  very 
confidently  announce  one  or  another  law,  which 
throws  itself  into  relief  and  form,  but  I  am  too 
young  yet  by  some  ages  to  compile  a  code.  I  gos 
sip  for  my  hour  concerning  the  eternal  politics. 
I  have  seen  many  fair  pictures  not  in  vain.  A  won 
derful  time  I  have  lived  in.  I  am  not  the  novice  I 


84  EXPERIENCE. 

was  fourteen,  nor  yet  seven  years  ago.     Let  who 
will  ask  Where  is  the  fruit  ?     I  find  a  private  fruit 
sufficient.     This  is  a  fruit,  —  that  I  should  not  ask  f 
for  a  rash  effect  from  meditations,  counsels  and  the  I 
hiving  of  truths.     I  should  feel  it  pitiful  to  demand  / 
a  result  on  this  town  and  county,  an  overt  effect  / 
on  the  instant  month  and  year.     The  effect  is  deep/ 
and  secular  as  the  cause.     It  works  011  periods  in 
which  mortal  lifetime  is  lost.     All  I  know  is  recep 
tion  ;  I  am  and  I  have  :  but  I  do  not  get,  and  when 
I  have  fancied  I  had  gotten  anything,  I  found  I  did 
riot.      I  worship  with  wonder  the   great  Fortune. 
My  reception  has  been  so  large,  that  I  am  not  an 
noyed    by  receiving  this  or  that  superabundantly. 
I  say  to  the  Genius,  if  he  will  pardon  the  'proverb, 
In  for  a  mill,  in  for  a  million.     When  I  receive  a 
new  gift,  I  do  not  macerate  my  body  to  make  the 
account  square,  for  if  I  should  die  I  could  not  make 
the  account  square.     The  benefit  overran  the  merit 
the  first  day,  and  has  overrun  the  merit  ever  since. 
The  merit  itself,  so-called,  I  reckon  part  of  the  re 
ceiving. 

Also  that  hankering  after  an  overt  or  practical 
effect  seems  to  me  an  apostasy.  In  good  earnest 
I  am  willing  to  spare  this  most  unnecessary  deal  of 
doing.  Life  wears  to  me  a  visionary  face.  Hard 
est  roughest  action  is  visionary  also.  It  is  but  a 
choice  between  soft  and  turbulent  dreams.  People 


EXPERIENCE.  85 

disparage  knowing  and  the  intellectual  life,  and 
urge  doing.  I  am  very  content  with  knowing,  if 
only  I  could  know.  That  is  an  august  entertain 
ment,  and  would  suffice  me  a  great  while.  To 
know  a  little  would  be  worth  the  expense  of  this 
world.  I  hear  always  the  law  of  Adrastia,  "  that 
every  soul  which  had  acquired  any  truth,  should  be 
safe  from  harm  until  another  period." 

I  know  that  the  world  I  converse  with  in  the  city 
and  in  the  farms,  is  not  the  world  I  thinlc.  I  ob 
serve  that  difference,  and  shall  observe  it.  One 
day  I  shall  know  the  value  and  law  of  this  dis 
crepance.  But  I  have  not  found  that  much  was 
gained  by  manipular  attempts  to  realize  the  world 
of  thought.  Many  eager  persons  successively  make 
an  experiment  in  this  way,  and  make  themselves 
ridiculous.  They  acquire  democratic  manners,  they 
foam  at  the  mouth,  they  hate  and  deny.  Worse, 
I  observe  that  in  the  history  of  mankind  there  is 
never  a  solitary  example  of  success,  —  taking 
their  own  tests  of  success.  I  say  this  polemically, 
or  in  reply  to  the  inquiry,  Why  not  realize  your 
world  ?  But  far  be  from  me  the  despair  which 
prejudges  the  law  by  a  paltry  empiricism  ; —  since 
there  never  was  a  right  endeavor  but  it  succeeded. 
Patience  and  patience,  we  shall  win  at  the  last. 
We  must  be  very  suspicious  of  the  deceptions 
of  the  element  of  time.  It  takes  a  good  deal  of 


86  EXPERIENCE. 

time  to  eat  or  to  sleep,  or  to  earn  a  hundred  dol 
lars,  and  a  very  little  time  to  entertain  a  hope  and 
an  insight  which  becomes  the  light  of  our  life.  We 
dress  our  garden,  eat  our  dinners,  discuss  the  house 
hold  with  our  wives,  and  these  things  make  no  im 
pression,  are  forgotten  next  week  ;  but,  in  the  soli 
tude  to  which  every  man  is  always  returning,  he 
has  a  sanity  and  revelations  which  in  his  passage 
into  new  worlds  he  will  carry  with  him.  Never 
mind  the  ridicule,  never  mind  the  defeat ;  up  again, 
old  heart !  —  it  seems  to  say,  —  there  is  victory  yet 
for  all  justice ;  and  the  true  romance  which  the 
world  exists  to  realize  will  be  the  transformation  of 
genius  into  practical  power. 


CHARACTER. 


The  sun  set ;  but  set  not  his  hope : 
Stars  rose ;  his  faith  was  earlier  up  i 
Fixed  on  the  enormous  galaxy, 
Deeper  and  older  seemed  his  eye  : 
And  matched  his  sufferance  sublime 
The  taciturnity  of  time. 
He  spoke,  and  words  more  soft  than  rain 
Brought  the  Age  of  Gold  again : 
His  action  won  such  reverence  sweet. 
As  hid  all  measure  of  the  feat. 


Work  of  his  hand 
He  nor  commends  nor  grieves ! 
Pleads  for  itself  the  fact ; 
As  unrepenting  Nature  leaves 
Her  every  act. 


III. 

CHARACTER. 


I  HAVE  read  that  those  who  listened  to  Lord 
Chatham  felt  that  there  was  something  finer  in  the 
man  than  any  thing  which  he  said.  It  has  been 
complained  of  our  brilliant  English  historian  of  the 
French  Revolution  that  when  he  has  told  all  his 
facts  about  Mirabeau,  they  do  not  justify  his  esti 
mate  of  his  genius.  The  Gracchi,  Agis,  Cle- 
omenes,  and  others  of  Plutarch's  heroes,  do  not 
in  the  record  of  facts  equal  their  own  fame.  Sir 
Philip  Sidney,  the  Earl  of  Essex,  Sir  Walter  Ra 
leigh,  are  men  of  great  figure  and  of  few  deeds. 
We  cannot  find  the  smallest  part  of  the  personal 
weight  of  Washington  in  the  narrative  of  his  ex- 

o  t  o 

ploits.  The  authority  of  the  name  of  Schiller  is 
too  great  for  his  books.  This  inequality  of  the 
reputation  to  the  works  or  the  anecdotes  is  not 
accounted  for  by  saying  that  the  reverberation 
is  longer  than  the  thunder-clap,  but  somewhat  re 
sided  in  these  men  which  begot  an  expectation  that 
outran  all  their  performance.  The  largest  part  of 


90  CHARACTER. 

their  power  was  latent.  This_is_thaJL  which  we  call 
Character,  —  a  reserved  force,  which  acts  directly 
by  presence  and  without  means.  It  is  conceived 
of  as  a  certain  undemonstrable  force,  a  Familiar  or 
Genius,  by  whose  impulses  the  man  is  guided  but 
^whose  counsels  he  cannot  impart ;  which  is  com 
pany  for  him,  so  that  such  men  are  often  solitary, . 
or  if  they  chance  to  be  social,  do  not  need  society 
but  can  entertain  themselves  very  well  alone.  The 
purest  literary  talent  appears  at  one  time  great,  at 
another  time  small,  but  character  is  of  a  stellar  and 
undiminishable  greatness.  What  others  effect  by 
talent  or  by  eloquence,  this  man  accomplishes  by 
some  magnetism.  "  Half  his  strength  he  put  not 
forth."  His  victories  are  by  demonstration  of  su 
periority,  and  not  by  crossing  of  bayonets.  He 
conquers  because  his  arrival  alters  the  face  of  af 
fairs.  "  O  lole  !  how  did  you  know  that  Hercules 
was  a  god  ?  "  "  Because,"  answered  lole,  "  I  was 
content  the  moment  my  eyes  fell  on  him.  When, 
I  beheld  Theseus,  I  desired  that  I  might  see  him 
offer  battle,  or  at  least  guide  his  horses  in  the  char 
iot-race  ;  but  Hercules  did  not  wait  for  a  contest ; 
he  conquered  whether  he  stood,  or  walked,  or  sat,  or 
whatever  thing  he  did."  (^Man,  ordinarily  a  pen 
dant  to  events,  only  half  attached,  and  that  awk 
wardly,  to  the  world  he  lives  in,  in  these  examples 
appears  to  share  the  life  of  things,  and  to  be  an  ex« 


CHARACTER.  91 

pression  of  the  same  laws  which  control  the  tides 
and  the  sun,  numbers  and  quantities. "] 

But  to  use  a  more  modest  illustration  and  nearer 
home,  I  observe  that  in  our  political  elections, 
where  this  element,  if  it  appears  at  all,  can  only 
occur  in  its  coarsest  form,  we  sufficiently  under 
stand  its  incomparable  rate.  The  people  know 
that  they  neecTTn  their  representative  much  more 
than  talent,  namely  the  power  to  make  his  talent 
trusted.  They  cannot  come  at  their  ends  by  send 
ing  to  Congress  a  learned,  acute,  and  fluent  speaker, 
if  he  be  not  one  who,  before  he  was  appointed  by 
the  people  to  represent  them,  was  appointed  by 
Almighty  God  to  stand  for  a  fact,  —  invincibly 
persuaded  of  that  fact  in  himself,  —  so  that  the 
most  confident  and  the  most  violent  persons  learn 
that  here  is  resistance  on  which  both  impudence 
and  terror  are  wasted,  namely  faith  in  a  fact.  The 
men  who  carry  their  points  do  not  need  to  inquire 
of  their  constituents  what  they  should  say,  but  are 
themselves  the  country  which  they  represent ;  no 
where  are  its  emotions  or  opinions  so  instant  and 
true  as  in  them;  nowhere  so  pure  from  a  selfish 
infusion.  The  constituency  at  home  hearkens  to 
their  words,  watches  the  color  of  their  cheek,  and 
therein,  as  in  a  glass,  dresses  its  own.  Our  public 
assemblies  are  pretty  good  tests  of  manly  force. 
Our  frank  countrymen  of  the  west  and  south  have 


92  C1IARA  CTER. 

a  taste  for  character,  and  like  to  know  whether  the 
New  Englander  is  a  substantial  man,  or  whether 
the  hand  can  pass  through  him. 

The  same  motive  force  appears  in  trade.  There 
are  geniuses  in  trade,  as  well  as  in  war,  or  the 
State,  or  letters  ;  and  the  reason  why  this  or  that 
man  is  fortunate  is  not  to  be  told.  It  lies  in  the 
man;  that  is  all  anybody  can  tell  you  about  it. 
See  him  and  you  will  know  as  easily  why  he  suc 
ceeds,  as,  if  you  see  Napoleon,  you  would  compre 
hend  his  fortune.  In  the  new  objects  we  recognize 
the  old  game,  the  habit  of  fronting  the  fact,  and  not 
dealing  with  it  at  second  hand,  through  the  percep 
tions  of  somebody  else.  Nature  seems  to  authorize 
trade,  as  soon  as  you  see  the  natural  merchant,  who 
appears  not  so  much  a  private  agent  as  her  factor 
and  Minister  of  Commerce.  His  natural  probity 
combines  with  his  insight  into  the  fabric  of  society 
to  put  him  above  tricks,  and  he  communicates  to 
all  his  own  faith  that  contracts  are  of  no  private 
interpretation.  The  habit  of  his  mind  is  a  refer 
ence  to  standards  of  natural  equity  and  public  ad 
vantage  ;  and  he  inspires  respect  and  the  wish  to 
deal  with  him,  both  for  the  quiet  spirit  of  honor 
which  attends  him,  and  for  the  intellectual  pastime 
which  the  spectacle  of  so  much  ability  affords. 
This  immensely  stretched  trade,  which  makes  the 
capes  of  the  Southern  Ocean  his  wharves  and  the 


CHARACTER.  93 

Atlantic  Sea  Ms  familiar  port,  centres  in  his  brain 
only ;  and  nobody  in  the  universe  can  make  his 
place  good.  In  his  parlor  I  see  very  well  that  he 
has  been  at  hard  work  this  morning,  with  that 
knitted  brow  and  that  settled  humor,  which  all  his 
desire  to  be  courteous  cannot  shake  off.  I  see 
plainly  how  many  firm  acts  have  been  done ;  how 
many  valiant  noes  have  this  day  been  spoken, 
when  others  would  have  uttered  ruinous  yeas.  I 
see,  with  the  pride  of  art  and  skill  of  masterly 
arithmetic  and  power  of  remote  combination,  the 
consciousness  of  being  an  agent  and  playfellow  of 
the  original  laws  of  the  world.  He  too  believes 
that  none  can  supply  him,  and  that  a  man  must  be 
born  to  trade  or  he  cannot  learn  it. 

This  virtue  draws  the  mind  more  when  it  ap 
pears  in  action  to  ends  not  so  mixed.  It  works 
with  most  energy  in  the  smallest  companies  and  in 
private  relations.  In  all  cases  it  is  an  extraordi 
nary  and  incomputable  agent.  The  excess  of  phys 
ical  strength  is  paralyzed  by  it.  Higher  natures 
overpower  lower  ones  by  affecting  them  with  a  cer 
tain  sleep.  The  faculties  are  locked  up,  and  offer 
no  resistance.  Perhaps  that  is  the  universal  law. 
When  the  high  cannot  bring  up  the  low  to  itself, 
it  benumbs  it,  as  man  charms  down  the  resistance 
of  the  lower  animals.  \  Men  exert  on  each  other  a 
similar  occult  power.  How  often  has  the  influence 


94  CHARACTER. 

of  a  true  master  realized  all  tlie  tales  of  magic  !  A 
river  of  command  seemed  to  run  down  from  his 
eyes  into  all  those  who  beheld  him,  a  torrent  of 
strong  sad  light,  like  an  Ohio  or  Danube,  which 
pervaded  them  with  his  thoughts  and  colored  all 
events  with  the  hue  of  his  mind.  "  What  means 
did  you  employ  ?  "  was  the  question  asked  of  the 
wife  of  Concini,  in  regard  to  her  treatment  of  Mary 
'of  Medici ;  and  the  answer  was,  "  Only  that  influ 
ence  which  every  strong  mind  has  over  a  weak 
one."  Cannot  Caesar  in  irons  shuffle  off  the  irons 
and  transfer  them  to  the  person  of  Hippo  or  Thra- 
so  the  turnkey?  Is  an  iron  handcuff  so  immu 
table  a  bond?  Suppose  a  slaver  on  the  coast  of 
Guinea  should  take  on  board  a  gang  of  negroes 
which  should  contain  persons  of  the  stamp  of  Tous- 
saint  L'Ouverture  :  or,  let  us  fancy,  under  these 
swarthy  masks  he  has  a  gang  of  Washingtons  in 
chains.  When  they  arrive  at  Cuba,  will  the  rela 
tive  order  of  the  ship's  company  be  the  same  ?  Is 
there  nothing  but  rope  and  iron  ?  Is  there  no  love, 
no  reverence  ?  Is  there  never  a  glimpse  of  right 
in  a  poor  slave-captain's  mind ;  and  cannot  these  be 
supposed  available  to  break  or  elude  or  in  any 

manner  overmatch  the  tension  of  an  inch  or  two  of 

\ 

iron  ring  ? 

This  is  a  natural  power,  like  light  and  heat,  and 
all  nature  cooperates  with  it.     The  reason  why  we 


CHARACTER.  96 

feel  one  man's  presence  r  id  do  not  feel  another's  /> 
is  as  simple  as  gravity,  \  Truth  is  the  summit  of  (/ 
being ;  justice  is  the  application  of  it  to  affairs. 
All  individual  natures  stand  in  a  scale,  according 
to  the  purity  of  this  element  in  them.  The  will  of 
the  pure  runs  down  from  them  into  other  natures, 
as  water  runs  down  from  a  higher  into  a  lower  ves 
sel.  This  natural  force  is  no  more  to  be  withstood 
than  any  other  natural  force.  We  can  drive  a 
stone  upward  for  a  moment  into  the  air,  but  it  is 
yet  true  that  all  stones  will  forever  fall ;  and  what 
ever  instances  can  be  quoted  of  unpunished  theft, 
or  of  a  lie  which  somebody  credited,  justice  must 
prevail,  and  it  is  the  privilege  of  truth  to  make  it 
self  believed.  {Character  is  this  moral  order  seen 
through  the  medium  of  an  individual  nature.  An 
individual  is  an  encloser.  Time  and  space,  liberty 
and  necessity,  truth  and  thought,  are  left  at  large 
no  longer.  Now,  the  universe  is  a  close  or  pound. 
All  things  exist  in  the  man  tinged  with  the  man 
ners  of  his  soul.  With  what  quality  is  in  him  he 
infuses  all  nature  that  he  can  reach ;  nor  does  he 
tend  to  lose  himself  in  vastness,  but,  at  how  long  a 
curve  soeveryall  his  regards  return  into  his  own 
good  at  last.  \  He  animates  all  he  can,  and  he  sees 
only  what  he  animates.  He  encloses  the  worlcfc  as 
the  patriot  does  his  country,  as  a  material  basis  for 
his  character,  and  a  theatre  for  action.  A  healthy 


96  CHARACTER. 

soul  stands  united  with  the  Just  and  the  True,  as 
the  magnet  arranges  itself  with  the  pole  ;  so  that  he 
stands  to  all  beholders  like  a  transparent  object  be 
twixt  them  and  the  sun,  and  whoso  journeys  to 
wards  the  sun,  journeys  towards  that  person.  |  He 
is  thus  the  medium  of  the  highest  influence  to  all 
who  are  not  on  the  same  level.  \  Thus  men  of  char 
acter  are  the  conscience  of  the  society  to  which  they 
belong. 

The  natural  measure  of  this  power  i&  the  resist 
ance  of  circumstances.  Impure  men  consider  life 
as  it  is  reflected  in  opinions,  events,  and  persons. 
They  cannot  see  the  action  until  it  is  done.  Yet 
its  moral  element  preexisted  in  the  actor,  and  its 
quality  as  right  or  wrong  it  was  easy  to  predict. 
Everything  in  nature  is  bipolar,  or  has  a  positive 
and  a  negative  pole.  There  is  a  male  and  a  female, 
a  spirit  and  a  fact,  a  north  and  a  south.  Spirit  is 
the  positive,  the  event  is  the  negative.  Will  is  the 
north,  action  the  south  pole.  Character  may  be 
ranked  as  having  its  natural  place  in  the  north.  It 
shares  the  magnetic  currents  of  the  system.  The 
feeble  souls  are  drawn  to  the  south  or  negative 
pole.  They  look  at  the  profit  or  hurt  of  the  action. 
They  never  behold  a  principle  until  it  is  lodged  in 
a  person.  They  do  not  wish  to  be  lovely,  but  to  be 
loved.  Men  of  character  like  to  hear  of  their  faults  ; 
the  other  class  do  not  like  to  hear  of  faults ;  they 


CHARACTER.  97 

worship  events ;  secure  to  them  a  fact,  a  connection, 
a  certain  chain  of  circumstances,  and  they  will  ask 
no  more.  The  hero  sees  that  the  event  is  ancil 
lary  ;  it  must  follow  him.  A  given  order  of  events 
has  no  power  to  secure  to  him  the  satisfaction 
which  the  imagination  attaches  to  it ;  the  soul  of 
goodness  escapes  from  any  set  of  circumstances ; 
whilst  prosperity  belongs  to  a  certain  mind,  and 
will  introduce  that  power  and  victory  which  is  its 
natural  fruit,  into  any  order  of  events.  No  change 
of  circumstances  can  repair  a  defect  of  character. 
We  boast  our  emancipation  from  many  supersti 
tions  ;  but  if  we  have  broken  any  idols  it  is  through 
a  transfer  of  the  idolatry.  What  have  I  gained, 
that  I  no  longer  immolate  a  bull  to  Jove  or  to  Nep 
tune,  or  a  mouse  to  Hecate  ;  that  I  do  not  tremble 
before  the  Eumenides,  or  the  Catholic  Purgatory,  or 
the  Calvinistic  Judgment-day,  -/if  I  quake  at  opin 
ion,  the  public  opinion  as  we  call  it ;  or  at  the  threat 
of  assault,  or  contumely,  or  bad  neighbors,  or  pov 
erty,  or  mutilation,  or  at  the  rumor  of  revolution,  or 
of  murder  ?£lf  I  quake,  what  matters  it  what  I 
quake  at  ?  Our  proper  vice  takes  form  in  one  or 
another  shape,  according  to  the  sex,  age,  or  temper 
ament  of  the  person,  and,  if  we  are  capable  of  fear, 
will  readily  find  terrorsj  The  covetousness  or  the 
malignity  which  saddens  me  when  I  ascribe  it  to  so 
ciety,  is  my  own.  I  am  always  environed  by  myself. 


98  CHARACTER. 

On  the  other  part,  rectitude  is  a  perpetual  victory, 
celebrated  not  by  cries  of  joy  but  by  serenity,  which 
is  joy  fixed  or  habitual.  It  is  disgraceful  to  fly 
to  events  for  confirmation  of  our  truth  and  worth. 
The  capitalist  does  not  run  every  hour  to  the  broker 
to  coin  his  advantages  into  current  money  of  the 
realm  ;  he  is  satisfied  to  read  in  the  quotations  of 
the  market  that  his  stocks  have  risen.  The  same 
transport  which  the  occurrence  of  the  best  events  in 
the  best  order  would  occasion  me,  I  must  learn  to 
taste  purer  in  the  perception  that  my  position  is 
every  hour  melioj?ated,  and  does  already  command 
those  events  I  desire.  That  exultation  is  only  to 
be  checked  by  the  foresight  of  an  order  of  things 
so  excellent  as  to  throw  all  our  prosperities  into 
the  deepest  shade. 

The  face  which  character  wears  to  me  is  self- 
sufficingness.  I  revere  the  person  who  is  riches  ; 
so  that  I  cannot  think  of  him  as  alone,  or  poor,  or 
exiled,  or  unhappy,  or  a  client,  but  as  perpetual  pa 
tron,  benefactor,  and  beatified  man.  Character  is 
centrality,  the  impossibility  of  being  displaced  or 
overset.  ")  A  man  should  give  us  a  sense  of  mass. 
Society  is  frivolous,  and  shreds  its  day  into  scraps, 
its  conversation  into  ceremonies  and  escapes.  But 
if  I  go  to  see  an  ingenious  man  I  shall  think  my 
self  poorly  entertained  if  he  give  me  nimble  pieces 
of  benevolence  and  etiquette ;  rather  he  shall  stand 


CHARACTER.  99 

stoutly  in  his  place  and  let  me  apprehend  if  it  were 
only  his  resistance  ;  know  that  I  have  encountered 
a  new  and  positive  quality ;  —  great  refreshment 
for  both  of  us.  It  is  much  that  he  does  not  accept 
the  conventional  opinions  and  practices.  That  non 
conformity  will  remain  a  goad  and  remembrancer, 
and  every  inquirer  will  have  to  dispose  of  him,  in 
the  first  place.  There  is  nothing  real  or  usefulj 
fthat  is  not  a  seat  of  war.  Our  houses  ring  with 
laughter  and  personal  and  critical  gossip,  but  it 
helps  little.  But  the  uncivil,  unavailable  man,  who 
is  a  problem  and  a  threat  to  society,  whom  it  can 
not  let  pass  in  silence  but  must  either  worship  or 
hate,  —  and  to  whom  all  parties  feel  related,  both 
the  leaders  of  opinion  and  the  obscure  and  eccen 
tric,  —  he  helps  ;  he  puts  America  and  Europe  in 
the  wrong,  and  destroys  the  skepticism  which  says, 
'  man  is  a  doll,  let  us  eat  and  drink,  't  is  the  best 
we  can  do,'  by  illuminating  the  untried  and  un 
known.  Acquiescence  in  the  establishment  and 
appeal  to  the  public,  indicate  infirm  faith,  heads 
which  are  not  clear,  and  which  must  see  a  house 
built,  before  they  can  comprehend  the  plan  of  it. 

I  The  wise  man  not  only  leaves  out  of  his  thought 
the  many,  but  leaves  out  the  few.  Fountains,  tho 
self-moved,  the  absorbed,  the  commander  because 
he  is  commanded,  the  assured,  the  primary,  —  they 
are  good ;  for  these  announce  the  instant  presence 
of  supreme  power. 


100  CHARACTER. 

Our  action  should  rest  mathematically  on  our 
substance.  In  nature  there  are  no  false  valuations. 
A  pound  of  water  in  the  ocean  -  tempest  has  no 
more  gravity  than  in  a  midsummer  pond.  All 
things  work  exactly  according  to  their  quality  and. 
according  to  their  quantity ;  attempt  nothing  they 
cannot  do,  except  man  only.  He  has  pretension  ; 
he  wishes  and  attempts  things  beyond  his  force.  -I 
read  in  a  book  of  English  memoirs,  "  Mr.  Fox 
(afterwards  Lord  Holland)  said,  he  must  have  the 
Treasury ;  he  had  served  up  to  it,  and  would  have 
it."  Xenophon  and  his  Ten  Thousand  were  quite 
equal  to  what  they  attempted,  and  did  it ;  so  equal, 
that  it  was  not  suspected  to  be  a  grand  and  inimita 
ble  exploit.  Yet  there  stands  that  fact  unrepeated, 
a  high-water  mark  in  military  history.  Many  have 
attempted  it  since,  and  not  been  equal  to  it.  It  is 
only  on  reality  that  any  power  of  action  can  be 
based.  No  institution  will  be  better  than  the  instil 
tutor.  I  knew  an  amiable  and  accomplished  person 
who  undertook  a  practical  reform,  yet  I  was  never 
able  to  find  in  him  the  enterprise  of  love  he  took  in 
hand.  He  adopted  it  by  ear  and  by  the  under 
standing  from  the  books  he  had  been  reading.  All 
his  action  was  tentative,  a  piece  of  the  city  carried 
out  into  the  fields,  and  was  the  city  still,  and  no 
new  fact,  and  could  not  inspire  enthusiasm.  Had 
there  been  something  latent  in  the  man,  a  terrible 


CHARACTER.  101 

undemonstrated  genius  agitating  and  embarrassing 
his  demeanor,  we  had  watched  for  its  advent.  It 
is  not  enough  that  the  intellect  should  see  the  evils 

O 

and  their  remedy.  We  shall  still  postpone  our  ex 
istence,  nor  take  the  ground  to  which  we  are  en 
titled,  whilst  it  is  only  a  thought  and  not  a  spirit 
that  incites  us.  We  have  not  yet  served  up  to  it. 
/These  are  properties  of  life,  and  another  trait  is 
the  notice  of  incessant  growth.  Men  should  be  in 
telligent  and  earnest.  They  must  also  make  us  feel 
that  they  have  a  controlling  happy  future  opening 
before  them,  whose  early  twilights  already  kindle  j, 
in  the  passing  hour.  \  The  hero  is  misconceived  and 
misreported ;  he  cannot  therefore  wait  to  unravel 
any  man's  blunders ;  he  is  again  on  his  road,  add 
ing  new  powers  and  honors  to  his  domain  and  new 
claims  on  your  heart,  which  will  bankrupt  you  if 
you  have  loitered  about  the  old  things  and  have  not 
kept  your  relation  to  him  by  adding  to  your  wealth. 

{'"New  actions  are  the  only  apologies  and  explana 
tions  of  old  ones  which  the  noble  can  bear  to  offer  k 
or  to  receive.     If  your  friend  has  displeased  jrou, 

;  you  shall  not  sit  down  to  consider  it,  for  he  has        / 
already  lost  all   memory  of  the  passage,  and  has 
doubled  his  power  to  serve  you,  and  ere  you  can 
rise  up  again  will  burden  you  with  blessings.  \ 

We  have  no  pleasure  in  thinking  of  a  bdnevo- 
lence  that  is  only  measured  by  its  works.     Love  is 


102  CHARACTER. 

inexhaustible,  and  if  its  estate  is  wasted,  its  gran 
ary  emptied,  still  cheers  and  enriches,  and  the  man, 
though  he  sleep,  seems  to  purify  the  air  and  his 
house  to  adorn  the  landscape  and  strengthen  the 
\  laws.  People  always  recognize  this  difference.  We 
know  who  is  benevolent,  by  quite  other  means  than 
the  amount  of  subscription  to  soup-societies.  It  is 
only  low  merits  that  can  be  enumerated.  jIFear, 
when  your  friends  say  to  you  what  you  have  done 
well,  and  say  it  through ;  but  when  they  stand  with 
uncertain  timid  looks  of  respect  and  half-dislike, 
and  must  suspend  their  judgment  for  years  to  come, 
you  may  begin  to  hope\  Those  who  live  to  the  ful 
ture  must  always  appear  selfish  to  those  who  live  to! 
the  present^  Therefore  it  was  droll  in  the  good 
Riemer,  who  has  written  memoirs  of  Goethe,  to 
make  out  a  list  of  his  donations  and  good  deeds,  as, 
so  many  hundred  thalers  given  to  Stilling,  to  Hegel, 
to  Tischbein ;  a  lucrative  place  found  for  Professor 
Voss,  a  post  under  the  Grand  Duke  for  Herder, 
a  pension  for  Meyer,  two  professors  recommended 
to  foreign  universities  ;  &c.,  &c.  The  longest  list 
of  specifications  of  benefit  would  look  very  short. 
A  man  is  a  poor  creature  if  he  is  to  be  measured 
so.  For  all  these  of  course  are  exceptions,  and  the 
rule  and  hodiernal  life  of  a  good  man  is  benef ac-, 
tion.  The  true  charity  of  Goethe  is  to  be  inferred 
from  the  account  he  gave  Dr.  Eckermann  of  the 


CHARACTER.  103 

way  in  which  he  had  spent  his  fortune.  "  Each 
bon-mot  of  mine  has  cost  a  purse  of  gold.  Half  a 
million  of  my  own  money,  the  fortune  I  inherited, 
my  salary  and  the  large  income  derived  from  my 
writings  for  fifty  years  back,  have  been  expended 
to  instruct  me  in  what  I  now  know.  I  have  besides 
seen,"  &c. 

I  own  it  is  but  poor  chat  and  gossip  to  go  to 
enumerate  traits  of  this  simple  and  rapid  power, 
and  we  are  painting  the  lightning  with  charcoal ; 
but  in  these  long  nights  and  vacations  I  like  to 
console  myself  so.  Nothing  but  itself  can  copy  it. 
A  word  warm  from  the  heart  enriches  me.  I  sur 
render  at  discretion.  How  death-cold  is  literary 
genius  before  this  fire  of  life!  These  are  the 
touches  that  reanimate  my  heavy  soul  and  give  it 
eyes  to  pierce  the  dark  of  nature.  I  find,  where 
I  thought  myself  poor,  there  was  I  most  rich. 
Thence  comes  a  new  intellectual  exaltation,  to  be 
again  rebuked  by  some  new  exhibition  of  charac 
ter.  Strange  alternation  of  attraction  and  repul 
sion  !  Character  repudiates  intellect,  yet  excites 
it ;  and  character  passes  into  thought,  is  published 
so,  and  then  is  ashamed  before  new  flashes  of  moral 
worth. 

/^Character  is  nature  in  the  highest  form.)  It  Is 
^*^~..^ .  n  n  m 

of  no  use  to  ape  it  or  to  contend  with  it.  oonie- 
what  is  possible  of  resistance,  and  of  persistence, 


104  CHARACTER. 

and  of  creation,  to  this  power,  which  will  foil  all 
emulation. 

This  masterpiece  is  best  where  no  hands  but  na 
ture's  have  been  laid  on  it.  Care  is  taken  that  the 
greatly-destined  shall  slip  up  into  life  in  the  shade, 
with  no  thousand-eyed  Athens  to  watch  and  blazon 
every  new  thought,  every  blushing  emotion  of  young 
genius.  Two  persons  lately,  very  young  children 
of  the  most  high  God,  have  given  me  occasion  for 
thought.  When  I  explored  the  source  of  their 
sanctity  and  charm  for  the  imagination,  it  seemed 
as  if  each  answered,  '  From  my  nonconformity ;  I 
never  listened  to  your  people's  law,  or  to  what  they 
call  their  gospel,  and  wasted  my  time.  I  was  con 
tent  with  the  simple  rural  poverty  of  my  own; 
hence  this  sweetness ;  my  work  never  reminds  you 
of  that ;  —  is  pure  of  that.'  And  nature  advertises 
me  in  such  persons  that  in  democratic  America  she 
will  not  be  democratized.  How  cloistered  and  con 
stitutionally  sequestered  from  the  market  and  from 
scandal !  It  was  only  this  morning  that  I  sent 
away  some  wild  flowers  of  these  wood-gods.  They 
are  a  relief  from  literature,  —  these  fresh  draughts 
from  the  sources  of  thought  and  sentiment ;  as  we 
read,  in  an  age  of  polish  and  criticism,  the  first 
lines  of  written  prose  and  verse  of  a  nation.  How 
captivating  is  their  devotion  to  their  favorite  books, 
whether  ^schylus,  Dante,  Shakspeare,  or  Scott, 


CHARACTER.  105 

as  feeling  that  they  have  a  stake  in  that  book ; 
who  touches  that,  touches  them  ;  —  and  especially 
the  total  solitude  of  the  critic,  the  Patmos  of 
thought  from  which  he  writes,  in  unconsciousness 
of  any  eyes  that  shall  ever  read  this  writing. 
Could  they  dream  on  still,  as  angels,  and  not  wake 
to  comparisons  and  to  be  flattered !  Yet  some 
natures  are  too  good  to  be  spoiled  by  praise,  and 
wherever  the  vein  of  thought  reaches  down  into 
the  profound,  there  is  no  danger  from  vanity.  Sol 
emn  friends  will  warn  them  of  the  danger  of  the 
head's  being  turned  by  the  flourish  of  trumpets, 
but  they  can  afford  to  smile.  I  remember  the  in 
dignation  of  an  eloquent  Methodist  at  the  kind  ad 
monitions  of  a  Doctor  of  Divinity,  — '  My  friend, 
a  man  can  neither  be  praised  nor  insulted.'  But 
forgive  the  counsels  ;  they  are  very  natural.  I 
remember  the  thought  which  occurred  to  me  when 
some  ingenious  and  spiritual  foreigners  came  to 
America,  was,  Have  you  been  victimized  in  being 
brought  hither  ?  —  or,  prior  to  that,  answer  me  this, 
4  'Are  you  victimizable  ? ' 

As  I  have  said,  Nature  keeps  these  sovereignties 
in  her  own  hands,  and  however  pertly  our  sermons 
and  disciplines  would  divide  some  share  of  credit, 
and  teach  that  the  laws  fashion  the  citizen,  she 
goes  her  own  gait  and  puts  the  wisest  in  the  wrong. 
She  makes  very  light  of  gospels  and  prophets,  as 


106  CHARACTER. 

one  who  has  a  great  many  more  to  produce  and  no 
excess  of  time  to  spare  on  any  one.  There  is  a  class 
of  men,  individuals  of  which  appear  at  long  inter 
vals,  so  eminently  endowed  with  insight  and  virtue 
that  they  have  been  unanimously  saluted  as  divine, 
and  who  seem  to  be  an  accumulation  of  that  power 
we  consider.  Divine  persons  are  character  born, 
or,  to  borrow  a  phrase  from  Napoleon,  they  are 
victory  organized.  They  are  usually  received  with 
ill-will,  because  they  are  new  and  because,  they  set 
a  bound  to  the  exaggeration  that  has  been  made  of 
the  personality  of  the  last  divine  person.  (JSFature 
never  rhymes  her  children,  nor  makes  two  men 
alike,  )  When  we  see  a  great  man  we  fancy  a  re 
semblance  to  some  historical  person,  and  predict 
the  sequel  of  his  character  and  fortune  ;  a  result 
which  he  is  sure  to  disappoint.  None  will  ever 
solve  the  problem  of  his  character  according  to  our 
prejudice,  but  only  in  his  own  high  unprecedented 
way  £ Character  wants  room  ;  must  not  be  crowded 
1  on  by  persons  nor  be  judged  from  glimpses  got 
in  the  press  of  affairs  or  on  few  occasions.  It 
needs  perspective,  as  a  great  building.  It  may  not, 
probably  does™iiot,  form  relations  rapidly;  and  we 
should  not  require  rash  explanation,  either  on  the 
popular  ethics,  or  on  our  own,  of  its  action  /\ 

I  look  on  Sculpture  as  history.     I  do  noT  think 
the  Apollo  and  the  Jove  impossible  in  flesh  and 


'U11IV 


CHARACTER.  __     


blood.  Every  trait  whicli  the  artist  recorded  in 
stone  lie  had  seen  in  life,  and  better  than  his  copy. 
We  have  seen  many  counterfeits,  but  we  are  born 
believers  in  great  men.  How  easily  we  read  in 
old  books,  when  men  were  few,  of  the  smallest 
action  of  the  patriarchs.  We  require  that  a  man 
should  be  so  large  and  columnar  in  the  landscape, 
that  it  should  deserve  to  be  recorded  that  he  arose, 
and  girded  up  his  loins,  and  departed  to  such  a 
place.  The  most  credible  pictures  are  those  of 
majestic  men  who  prevailed  at  their  entrance,  and 
convinced  the  senses ;  as  happened  to  the  eastern 
magian  who  was  sent  to  test  the  merits  of  Zertusht 
or  Zoroaster.  When  the  Yunani  sage  arrived  at 
Balkh,  the  Persians  tell  us,  Gushtasp  appointed  a 
day  on  which  the  Mobeds  of  every  country  should 
assemble,  and  a  golden  chair  was  placed  for  the 
Yunani  sage.  Then  the  beloved  of  Yezdam,  the 
prophet  Zertusht,  advanced  into  the  midst  of  the  as 
sembly.  The  Yunani  sage,  on  seeing  that  chief,  said, 
"  This  form  and  this  gait  cannot  lie,  and  nothing  but 
truth  can  proceed  from  them."  Plato  said  it  was 
impossible  not  to  believe  in  the  children  of  the 
gods,  "  though  they  should  speak  without  probable 
or  necessary  arguments."  I  should  think  myself 
very  unhappy  in  my  associates  if  I  could  not  credit 
the  best  things  in  history.  "  John  Bradshaw,"  says 
Milton,  "  appears  like  a  consul,  from  whom  the 


108  CHARACTER. 

fasces  are  not  to  depart  with  the  year ;  so  that  not 
on  the  tribunal  only,  but  throughout  his  life,  you 
would  regard  him  as  sitting  in  judgment  upon 
kings."  I  find  it  more  credible,  since  it  is  anterior 
information,  that  one  man  should  know  heaven,  as 
the  Chinese  say,  than  that  so  many  men  should 
know  the  world.  "  The  virtuous  prince  confronts 
the  gods,  without  any  misgiving.  He  waits  a  hun 
dred  ages  till  a  sage  comes,  and  does  not  doubt, 
He  who  confronts  the  gods,  without  any  misgiving, 
knows  heaven  ;  he  who  waits  a  hundred  ages  until 
a  sage  comes,  without  doubting,  knows  men.  Hence 
the  virtuous  prince  moves,  and  for  ages  shows  em 
pire  the  way."  But  there  is  no  need  to  seek  remote 
examples.  He  is  a  dull  observer  whose  experience 
has  not  taught  him  the  reality  and  force  of  magic,  as 
well  as  of  chemistry.  The  coldest  precisian  cannot 
go  abroad  without  encountering  inexplicable  influ 
ences.  One  man  fastens  an  eye  on  him  and  the 
graves  of  the  memory  render  up  their  dead;  the 
secrets  that  make  him  wretched  either  to  keep  or  to 
betray  must  be  yielded  ;  — another,  and  he  cannot 
speak,  and  the  bones  of  his  body  seem  to  lose  their 
cartilages;  the  entrance  of  a  friend  adds  grace, 
boldness,  and  eloquence  to  him  ;  and  there  are  per 
sons  he  cannot  choose  but  remember,  \vho  gave  a 
transcendent  expansion  to  his  thought,  and  kindled 
another  life  in  his  bosom. 


CHARACTER.  109 

What  is  so  excellent  as  strict  relations  of  amity, 
when  they  spring  from  this  deep  root  ?  The  suf 
ficient  reply  to  the  skeptic  who  doubts  the  power 
and  the  furniture  of  man,  is  in  that  possibility  of 
joyful  intercourse  with  persons,  which  makes  the 
faith  and  practice  of  all  reasonable  men.  I  know 
nothing  which  life  has  to  offer  so  satisfying  as  the 
profound  good  understanding  which  can  subsist, 
after  much  exchange  of  good  offices,  between  two 
virtuous  men,  each  of  whom  is  sure  of  himself  and 
sure  of  his  friend.  It  is  a  happiness  which  post 
pones  all  other  gratifications,  and  makes  politics, 
and  commerce,  and  churches,  cheap.  For  when 
men  shall  meet  as  they  ought,  each  a  benefactor,  a 
shower  of  stars,  clothed  with  thoughts,  with  deeds, 
with  accomplishments,  it  should  be,  the  festival  of 
nature  which  all  things  announce.  (  Of  such  friend 
ship,  love  in  the  sexes  is  the  first-  symbol,  as  all 
other  tilings  are  symbols  of  love.  Those  relations 
to  the  best  men,  which,  at  one  time,  we  reckoned 
the  romances  of  youth,  become,  in  the  progress  of 
the  character,  the  most  solid  enjoyment.  J 

If  it  were  possible  to  live  in  right  relations 
with  men  !  —  if  we  could  abstain  from  asking  any 
thing  of  them,  from  asking  their  praise,  or  help,  or 
pity,  and  content  us  with  compelling  them  through 
the  virtue  of  the  eldest  laws  !  Could  we  not  deal 
with  a  few  persons,  —  with  one  person,  —  after 


110  CHARACTER. 

the  unwritten  statutes,  and  make  an  experiment  of 
their  efficacy  ?  Could  we  not  pay  our  friend  the 
compliment  of  truth,  of  silence,  of  forbearing? 
Need  we  be  so  eager  to  seek  him  ?  \[f  we  are  re 
lated,  we  shall  meet.  )lt  was  a  tradition  of  the  an 
cient  world  that  no  metamorphosis  could  hide  a 
god  from  a  god ;  and  there  is  a  Greek  verse  which 
runs,  — 

"  The  Gods  are  to  each  other  not  unknown." 

Friends  also  follow  the  laws  of  divine  necessity ; 
they  gravitate  to  each  other,  and  cannot  other 
wise  :  — 

When  each  the  other  shall  avoid, 
Shall  each  by  each  be  most  enjoyed. 

Their  relation  is  not  made,  but  allowed.  The  gods 
must  seat  themselves  without  seneschal  in  our  Olym 
pus,  and  as  they  can  instal  themselves  by  seniority 
divine.  Society  is  spoiled  if  pains  are  taken,  if  the 
associates  are  brought  a  mile  to  meet.  And  if  it 
be  not  society,  it  is  a  mischievous,  low,  degrading 
jangle,  though  made  up  of  the  best.  All  the  great 
ness  of  each  is  kept  back  and  every  foible  in  pain 
ful  activity,  as  if  the  Olympians  should  meet  to  ex 
change  snuff-boxes. 

.  '  Life  goes  headlong.  We  chase  some  flying 
/scheme,  or  we  are  hunted  by  some  fear  or  com- 
Imand  behind  us.  But  if  suddenly  we  encounter  a 


CHARACTER.  Ill 

friend,  we  pause  ;  our  heat  and  hurry  look  foolish 
enough  ;  now  pause,  now  possession  is  required,  and 
the  power  to  swell  the  moment  from  the  resources 

of  the  heart.     The  moment  is  all,  in  all  noble  rela- 

\ 

tionsj 

i  A  divine  person  is  the  prophecy  of  the  mind ;  a 
friend  is  the  hope  of  the  heart.  Our  beatitude 
waits  for  the  fulfilment  of  these  two  in  one.  The 
ages  are  opening  this  moral  force.  All  force  is  the 
shadow  or  symbol  of  that.  Poetry  is  joyful  and 
strong  as  it  draws  its  inspiration  thence.  Men 
write  their  names  on  the  world  as  they  are  filled 
with  this.  History  has  been  mean  ;  our  nations 
have  been  mobs ;  we  have  never  seen  a  man  :  that 
divine  form  we  do  not  yet  know,  but  only  the  dream 
and  prophecy  of  such :  we  do  not  know  the  majestic 
manners  which  belong  to  him,  which  appease  and 
exalt  the  beholder  J  We  shall  one  day  see  that  the 
most  private  is  the  most  public  energy,  that  quality 
atones  for  quantity,  and  grandeur  of  character  acts 
in  the  dark,  and  succors  them  who  never  saw  it. 
What  greatness  has  yet  appeared  is  beginnings  and 
encouragements  to  us  in  this  direction.  The  history 
of  those  gods  and  saints  which  the  world  has  writ 
ten  and  then  worshipped,  are  documents  of  charac 
ter.  The  ages  have  exulted  in  the  manners  of  a 
youth  who  owed  nothing  to  fortune,  and  who  was 
hanged  at  the  Tyburn  of  his  nation,  who,  by  the 


112'  CHARACTER. 

pure  quality  of  his  nature,  shed  an  epic  splendor 
around  the  facts  of  his  death  which  has  transfigured 
every  particular  into  an  universal  symbol  for  the 
eyes  of  mankind.  This  great  defeat  is  hitherto  our 
highest  fact.  But  the  mind  requires  a  victory  to 
the  senses ;  a  force  of  character  which  will  convert 
judge,  jury,  soldier,  and  king  ;  which  will  rule  ani 
mal  and  mineral  virtues,  and  blend  with  the  courses 
of  sap,  of  rivers,  of  winds,  of  stars,  and  of  moral 
agents. 

If  we  cannot  attain  at  a  bound  to  these  gran 
deurs,  at  least  let  us  do  them  homage.  In  society, 
high  advantages  are  set  down  to  the  possessor  as 
disadvantages.  It  requires  the  more  wariness  in 
our  private  estimates.  I  do  not  forgive  in  my 
friends  the  failure  to  know  a  fine  character  and  to 
entertain  it  with  thankful  hospitality.  When  at 
last  that  which  we  have  always  longed  for  is  arrived 
and  shines  on  us  with  glad  rays  out  of  that  far  ce 
lestial  land,  then  to  be  coarse,  then  to  be  critical 
and  treat  such  a  visitant  with  the  jabber  and  sus 
picion  of  the  streets,  argues  a  vulgarity  that  seems 
to  shut  the  doors  of  heaven.  This  is  confusion,  this 
the  right  insanity,  when  the  soul  no  longer  knows 
its  own,  nor  where  its  allegiance,  its  religion,  are 
due.  Is  there  any  religion  but  this,  to  know  that 
wherever  in  the  wide  desert  of  being  the  holy  senti 
ment  we  cherish'  has  opened  into  a  flower,  it  blooms 


CHARACTER.  113 

for  me  ?  if  none  sees  it,  I  see  it ;  I  am  aware,  if  I 
alone,  of  the  greatness  of  the  fact.  Whilst  it  blooms, 
I  will  keep  sabbath  or  holy  time,  and  suspend  my 
gloom  and  my  folly  and  jokes.  Nature  is  indulged 
by  the  presence  of  this  guest.  There  are  many 
eyes  that  can  detect  and  honor  the  prudent  and 
household  virtues ;  there  are  many  that  can  discern 
Genius  on  his  starry  track,  though  the  mob  is  in 
capable  ;  but  when  that  love  which  is  all-suffering, 
all-abstaining,  all-aspiring,  which  has  vowed  to  it 
self  that  it  will  be  a  wretch  and  also  a  fool  in  this 
world  sooner  than  soil  its  white  hands  by  any  com 
pliances,  comes  into  our  streets  and  houses,  —  only 
the  pure  and  aspiring  can  know  its  face,  and  the 
only  compliment  they  can  pay  it  is  to  own  it. 


MANNERS. 


"  How  near  to  good  is  what  is  fair  ! 
Which  we  no  sooner  see, 
But  with  the  lines  and  outward  air 
Our  senses  taken  be. 

Again  yourselves  compose, 
And  now  put  all  the  aptness  on 
Of  Figure,  that  Proportion 

Or  Color  can  disclose ; 
That  if  those  silent  arts  were  lost, 
Design  and  Picture,  they  might  boast 

From  you  a  newer  ground, 
Instructed  by  the  heightening  sense 
Of  dignity  and  reverence 

In  their  true  motions  found." 

JONSON. 


IV. 

MANNERS. 


HALF  the  world,  it  is  said,  knows  not  how  the 
other  half  live.  Our  Exploring  Expedition  saw 
the  Feejee  islanders  getting  their  dinner  off  human 
bones;  and  they  are  said  to  eat  their  own  wives 
and  children.  The  husbandry  of  the  modern  in 
habitants  of  Gournou  (west  of  old  Thebes)  is 
philosophical  to  a  fault.  To  set  up  their  house 
keeping  nothing  is  requisite  but  two  or  three 
earthen  pots,  a  stone  to  grind  meal,  and  a  mat 
which  is  the  bed.  The  house,  namely  a  tomb,  is 
ready  without  rent  or  taxes.  No  rain  can  pass 
through  the  roof,  and  there  is  no  door,  for  there  is 
no  want  of  one,  as  there  is  nothing  to  lose.  If  the 
house  do  not  please  them,  they  walk  out  and  enter 
another,  as  there  are  several  hundreds  at  their 
command.  "  It  is  somewhat  singular,"  adds  Bel- 
zoni,  to  whom  we  owe  this  account,  "  to  talk  of 
happiness  among  people  who  live  in  sepulchres, 
among  the  corpses  and  rags  of  an  ancient  nation 
which  they  know  nothing  of."  In  the  deserts  of 


118  MANNERS. 

Borgoo  the  rock-Tibboos  still  dwell  in  caves,  like 
cliff-swallows,  and  the  language  of  these  negroes  is 
compared  by  their  neighbors  to  the  shrieking  of 
bats  and  to  the  whistling  of  birds.  Again,  the  Bor- 
noos  have  no  proper  names ;  individuals  are  called 
after  their  height,  thickness,  or  other  accidental 
quality,  and  have  nicknames  merely.  But  the  salt, 
the  dates,  the  ivory,  and  the  gold,  for  which  these 
horrible  regions  are  visited,  find  their  way  into 
countries  where  the  purchaser  and  consumer  can 
hardly  be  ranked  in  one  race  with  these  cannibals 
and  man-stealers ;  countries  where  man  serves  him 
self  with  metals,  wood,  stone,  glass,  gum,  cotton, 
silk,  and  wool ;  honors  himself  with  architecture ; 
i  writes  laws,  and  contrives  to  execute  his  will 
j  through  the  hands  of  many  nations ;  and,  espe 
cially,  establishes  a  select  society,  running  through 
all  the  countries  of  intelligent  men,  a  self-consti 
tuted  aristocracy,  or  fraternity  of  the  best,  which, 
without  written  law  or  exact  usage  of  any  kind, 
perpetuates  itself,  colonizes  every  new-planted  isl 
and  and  adopts  and  makes  its  own  whatever  per 
sonal  beauty  or  extraordinary  native  endowment 
anywhere  appears. 

What  fact  more  conspicuous  in  modern  history 
than  the  creation  of  the  gentleman  ?     Chivalry  is 
that,  and  loyalty  is  that,  and,  in  English  literature "< 
half  the  drama,  and  all  the  novels,  from  Sir  Philip 


MANNERS.  119 

Sidney  to  Sir  Walter  Scott,  paint  this  figure.  The 
word  gentleman,  which,  like  the  word  Christian, 
must  hereafter  characterize  the  present  and  the  few 
preceding  centuries  by  the  importance  attached  to 
it,  is  a  homage  to  personal  and  incommunicable 
properties.  Frivolous  and  fantastic  additions  have 
got  associated  with  the  name,  but  the  steady  inter 
est  of  mankind  in  it  must  be  attributed  to  the  valu 
able  properties  which  it  designates.  An  element 
__which  unites  all  the  most  forcible^jpersons  of  every 
country,  makes  them  intelligible  and  agreeable  to 
each  other,  and  is  somewhat  so  precise  that  it  is  at 
once  felt  if  an  individual  lack  the  masonic  sign,  — 
cannot  be  any  casual  product,  but  must  be  an  av 
erage  result  of  the  character  and  faculties  univer 
sally  found  in  men.  It  seems  a  certain  permanent 
average ;  as  the  atmosphere  is  a  permanent  compo 
sition,  whilst  so  many  gases  are  combined  only  to 
be  decompounded.  Comme  ilfaut,  is  the  French 
man*  s  description  of  good  society :  as  we  must  be. 
It  is  a  spontaneous  fruit  of  talents  and  feelings  of 
precisely  that  class  who  have  most  vigor,  who  take 
the  lead  in  the  world  of  this  hour,  and  though  far 
from  pure,  far  from  constituting  the  gladdest  and 
highest  tone  of  human  feeling,  it  is  as  good  as  the 
r  whole  society  permits  it  to  be.  It  is  made  of  the 
j*fep\rit,  more  than  of  the  talent  of  men,  and  is  a 
I  compound  result  into  which  every  great  force  en- 


120  MANNERS. 

ters  as  an  ingredient,  namely  virtue,  wit,  beauty, 
wealth,  and  power. 

There  is  something  equivocal  in  all  the  words  in 
use  to  express  the  excellence  of  manners  and  so 
cial  cultivation,  because  the  quantities  are  fluxional, 
and  the  last  effect  is  assumed  by  the  senses  as  the 
cause.  The  word  gentleman  has  not  any  correla 
tive  abstract  to  express  the  quality.  Gentility  is 
mean,  and  gentilesse  is  obsolete.  But  we  must 
keep  alive  in  the  vernacular  the  distinction  be 
tween  fashion,  a  word  of  narrow  and  often  sinister 
meaning,  and  the  heroic  character  which  the  gentle 
man  imports.  The  usual  words,  however,  must  be 
respected ;  they  will  be  found  to  contain  the,  root 
of  the  matter.  The  point  of  distinction  in  all  this 
class  of  names,  as  courtesy,  chivalry,  fashion,  and 
the  like,  is  that  the  flower  and  fruit,  not  the  grain 
of  the  tree,  are  contemplated.  It  is  beauty  which 
is  the  aim  this  time,  and  not  worth.  The  result  is 
now  in  question,  although  our  w^ords  intimate  well 
enough  the  popular  feeling  that  the  appearance 
supposes  a  substance.  vJh6  gentleman  is  a  man  of 
\j  truth,  lord  of  his  own  actions,  and  expressing  that 
lordship  in  his  behavior ;  not  in  any  manner  de 
pendent  and  servile,  either  on  persons,  or  opinions, 
or  possessions/? Beyond  this  fact  of  truth  and  real 
force,  the  woTU  denotes  good -nature  or  benevo 
lence  :  manhood  first,  and  then  gentleness.  The 


/ 


MANNERS.  121 

popular  notion  certainly  adds  a  condition  of  ease 
and  fortune  ;  but  that  is  a  natural  result  of  per 
sonal  force  and  love,  that  they  should  possess  and 
dispense  the  goods  of  the  world.  In  times  of 
violence,  every  eminent  person  must  fall  in  with 
many  opportunities  to  approve  his  stoutness  and. 
worth ;  therefore  every  man's  name  that  emerged 
at  all  from  the  mass  in  the  feudal  ages,  rattles  in 
our  ear  like  a  flourish  of  trumpets.  ;  But  personal 
force  never  goes  out  of  fashion.  That  is  still  par 
amount  to-day,  and  in  the  moving  crowd  of  good 
society  the  men  of  valor  and  reality  are  known 
and  rise  to  their  natural  place.  The  competition 
is  transferred  from  war  to  politics  and  trade,  but 
the  personal  force  appears  readily  enough  in  these 
new  Arenas. 

(tower  first,  or  no  leading  class.  In  politics  and 
in  trade,  bruisers  and  pirates  are  of  better  promise 
than  talkers  and  clerks.  God  knows  that  all  sorts 
of  gentlemen  knock  at  the  door ;  but  whenever 
used  in  strictness  and  with  any  emphasis,  the  name 
will  be  found  to  point  at  original  energy.  It  de 
scribes  a  man  standing  in  his  own  right  and  work 
ing  after  untaught  methods.  In  a  good  lord  there 
must  first  be  a  good  animal,  at  least  to  the  extent 
of  yielding  the  incomparable  advantage  of  animal 
spirits.  The  ruling  class  must  have  more,  but 
they  must  have  these,  giving  in  every  company  the 


122  MANNERS. 

sense  of  power,  which  makes  things  easy  to  be 
done  which  daunt  the  wise.  The  society  of  the  en 
ergetic  class,  in  their  friendly  and  festive  meetings, 
is  full  of  courage  and  of  attempts  which  intimidate 
the  pale  scholar.  The  courage  which  girls  exhibit 
is  like  a  battle  of  Lundy's  Lane,  or  a  sea-fight. 
The  intellect  relies  on  memory  to  make  some  sup 
plies  to  face  these  extemporaneous  squadrons.  But 
memory  is  a  base  mendicant  with  basket  and 
badge,  in  the  presence  of  these  sudden  masters. 
The  rulers  of  society  must  be  up  to  the  work  of  the 
world,  and  equal  to  their  versatile  office :  men  of 
the  right  Ca3sarian  pattern,  who  have  great  range  of 
affinity.  I  am  far  from  believing  the  timid  maxim 
of  Lord  Falkland  ("  that  for  ceremony  there  must 
go  two  to  it ;  since  a  bold  fellow  will  go  through 
the  cunningest  forms"),  and  am  of  opinion  that 
the  gentleman  is  the  bold  fellow  whose  forms  are 
not  to  be  broken  through  ;  and  only  that  plenteous 
nature  is  rightful  master  which  is  the  complement 
of  whatever  person  it  converses  with.  My  gentle 
man  gives  the  law  where  he  is ;  he  will  outpray 
saints  in  chapel,  outgeneral  veterans  in  the  field, 
and  outshine  all  courtesy  in  the  hall.  He  is  good 
company  for  pirates  and  good  with  academicians  ; 
so  that  it  is  useless  to  fortify  yourself  against  him  ; 
he  has  the  private  entrance  to  all  minds,  and  I 
could  as  easily  exclude  myself,  as  him.  The  fa- 


MANNERS.  123 

;    mous  gentlemen  of  Asia  and  Europe  have  been  of 
this  strong  type ;   Saladin,  Sapor,  the  Cid,  Julius 

r  Caesar,  Scipio,  Alexander,  Pericles,  and  the  lordli 
est  personages.  They  sat  very  carelessly  in  their 
chairs,  and  were  too  excellent  themselves,  to  value 
any  condition  at  a  high  rate. 

A  plentiful  fortune  is  reckoned  necessary,  in  the 
popular  judgment,  to  the  completion  of  this  man  of 
the  world  ;  and  it  is  a  material  deputy  which  walks 
through  the  dance  which  the  first  has  led.  Money 
is  not  essential,  but  this  wide  affinity  is,  which  tran 
scends  the  habits  of  clique  and  caste  and  makes  it 
self  felt  by  men  of  all  classes.  If  the  aristocrat  is 
only  valid  in  fashionable  circles  and  not  with  truck 
men,  he  will  never  be  a  leader  in  fashion ;  and  if 
the  man  of  the  people  cannot  speak  on  equal  terms 
with  the  gentleman,  so  that  the  gentleman  shall 
perceive  that  he  is  already  really  of  his  own  or 
der,  he  is  not  to  be  feared.  Diogenes,  Socrates, 
and  Epaminondas,  are  gentlemen  of  the  best  blood 
who  have  chosen  the  condition  of  poverty  when 
that  of  wealth  was  equally  open  to  them.  I  use 
these  old  names,  but  the  men  I  speak  of  are  my 
contemporaries.  Fortune  will  not  supply  to  every 
generation  one  of  these  well-appointed  knights, 
but  every  collection  of  men  furnishes  some  exam 
ple  of  the  class;  and  the  politics  of  this  country, 
and  the  trade  of  every  town,  are  controlled  by  these 


124  MANNERS. 

hardy  and  irresponsible  doers,  who  have  invention 
to  take  the  lead,  and  a  broad  sympathy  which  puts 
them  in  fellowship  with  crowds,  and  makes  their 
action  popular. 

The  manners  of  this  class  are  observed  and 
caught  with  devotion  by  men  of  taste.  The  asso 
ciation  of  these  masters  with  each  other  and  with 
men  intelligent  of  their  merits,  is  mutually  agreea 
ble  and  stimulating.  The  good  forms,  the  happiest 
expressions  of  each,  are  repeated  and  adopted.  By 
swift  consent  everything  superfluous  is  dropped, 
everything  graceful  is  renewed.  Fine  manners 
show  themselves  formidable  to  the  uncultivated 
man.  They  are  a  subtler  science  of  defence  to 
parry  and  intimidate  ;  but  once  matched  by  the 
skill  of  the  other  party,  they  drop  the  point  of  the 
sword, — points  and  fences  disappear,  and  the  youth 
finds  himself  in  a  more  transparent  atmosphere, 
wherein  life  is  a  less  troublesome  game,  and  not  a 
misunderstanding  rises  between  the  players.  Man 
ners  aim  to  facilitate  life,  to  get  rid  of  impediments 
and  bring  the  man  pure  to  energize.  They  aid  our 
dealing  and  conversation  as  a  railway  aids  travel 
ling,  by  getting  rid  of  all  avoidable  obstructions  of 
the  road  and  leaving  nothing  to  be  conquered  but 
pure  space.  These  forms  very  soon  become  fixed, 
and  a  fine  sense  of  propriety  is  cultivated  with  the 
more  heed  that  it  becomes  a  badge  of  social  and 


MANNERS.      4--  125 

3>bM^    c^Vv.Xry^b 

civil  distinctions.  Thus  grows  upLFashion,  an 
equivocal  semblance,  the  most  puissant,  the  most 
fantastic  and  frivolous,  the  most  feared  and  fol 
lowed,  and  which  morals  and  violence  assault  in 
vain. 

There  exists  a  strict  relation  betwreen  the  class  of 
power  and  the  exclusive  and  polished  circles.  The 
last  are  always  filled  or  filling  from  the  first.  The 
strong  men  usually  give  some  allowance  even  to 
the  petulances  of  fashion,  for  that  affinity  they  find 
in  it.  Napoleon,  child  of  the  revolution,  destroyer 
of  the  old  noblesse,  never  ceased  to  court  the  Fau 
bourg  St.  Germain  ;  doubtless  with  the  feeling  that 
fashion  is  a  homage  to  men  of  his  stamp.  Fashion,, 
though  in  a  strange  way,  represents  all  manly  vir 
tue.  It  is  virtue  gone  to  seed :  it  is  a  kind  of  post 
humous  honor.  It  does  not  often  caress  the  great, 
but  the  children  of  the  great :  it  is  a  hall  of  the 
Past.  It  usually  sets  its  face  against  the  great  of 
this  hour.  Great  men  are  not  commonly  in  its 
halls  ;  they  are  absent  in  the  field :  they  are  work 
ing,  not  triumphing.  Fashion  is  made  up  of  their 
children ;  of  those  who  through  the  value  and  vir 
tue  of  somebody,  have  acquired  lustre  to  their  name, 
marks  of  distinction,  means  of  cultivation  and  gen 
erosity,  and  in  their  physical  organization  a  certain 
health  and  excellence  which  secure  to  them,  if  not 
the  highest  power  to  work,  yet  high  power  to  enjoy. 


T26  MANNERS. 

The  class  of  power,  the  working  heroes,  the  Cortez, 
the  Nelson,  the  Napoleon,  see  that  this  is  the  festiv 
ity  and  permanent  celebration  of  such  as  they ;  that 
fashion  is  funded  talent ;  is  Mexico,  Marengo,  and 
Trafalgar  beaten  out  thin  ;  that  the  brilliant  names 
of  fashion  run  back  to  just  such  busy  names  as  their 
own,  fifty  or  sixty  years  ago.  They  are  the  sowers, 
their  sons  shall  be  the  reapers,  and  their  sons,  in 
the  ordinary  course  of  things,  must  yield  the  pos 
session  of  the  harvest  to  new  competitors  with 
keener  eyes  and  stronger  frames.  The  city  is  re 
cruited  from  the  country.  In  the  year  1805,  it  is 
said,  every  legitimate  monarch  in  Europe  was  imbe 
cile.  The  city  would  have  died  out,  rotted,  and 
exploded,  long  ago,  but  that  it  was  reinforced  from 
the  fields.  It  is  only  country  which  came  to  town 
day  before  yesterday  that  is  city  and  court  to-day. 

Aristocracy  and  fashion  are  certain  inevitable  re 
sults.  These  mutual  selections  are  indestructible. 
If  they  provoke  anger  in  the  least  favored  class, 
and  the  excluded  majority  revenge  themselves  on 
the  excluding  minority  by  the  strong  hand  and 
kill  them,  at  once  a  new  class  finds  itself  at  the  top, 
as  certainly  as  cream  rises  in  a  bowl  of  milk :  and 
if  the  people  should  destroy  class  after  class,  until 
two  men  only  were  left,  one  of  these  would  be  the 
leader  and  would  be  involuntarily  served  and  cop 
ied  by  the  other.  You  may  keep  this  minority  out 


MANNERS.  127 

of  sight  and  out  of  mind,  but  it  is  tenacious  of  life, 
and  is  one  of  the  estates  of  the  realm.  I  am  the 
more  struck  with  this  tenacity,  when  I  see  its  work. 
It  respects  the  administration  of  such  unimportant 
matters,  that  we  should  not  look  for  any  durability 
in  its  rule.  We  sometimes  meet  men  under  some 
strong  moral  influence,  as  a  patriotic,  a  literary,  a 
religious  movement,  and  feel  that  the  moral  senti 
ment  rules  man  and  nature.  We  think  all  other 
distinctions  and  ties  will  be  slight  and  fugitive,  this 
of  caste  or  fashion  for  example ;  yet  come  from 
year  to  year  and  see  how  permanent  that  is,  in  this 
Boston  or  New  York  life  of  man,  where  too  it  has 
not  the  least  countenance  from  the  law  of  the  land. 
Not  in  Egypt  or  in  India  a  firmer  or  more  impas 
sable  line.  Here  are  associations  whose  ties  go 
over  and  under  and  through  it,  a  meeting  of  mer 
chants,  a  military  corps,  a  college  class,  a  fire-club, 
a  professional  association,  a  political,  a  religious 
convention ;  —  the  persons  seem  to  draw  insepara 
bly  near;  yet,  that  assembly  once  dispersed,  its 
members  will  not  in  the  year  meet  again.  Each 
returns  to  his  degree  in  the  scale  of  good  society, 
porcelain  remains  porcelain,  and  earthen  earthen. 
The  objects  of  fashion  may  be  frivolous,  or  fashion 
may  be  objectless,  but  the  nature  of  this  union  and 
selection  can  be  neither  frivolous  nor  accidental. 
Each  man's  rank  in  that  perfect  graduation  de- 


128  MANNERS. 

pends  on  some  symmetry  in  his  structure  or  some 
agreement  in  his  structure  to  the  symmetry  of  so 
ciety.  Its  doors  unbar  instantaneously  to  a  natu 
ral  claim  of  their  own  kind.  .A  natural  gentleman 
finds  his  way  in,  and  will  keep  the  oldest  patrician 
out  who  has  lost  his  intrinsic  rank.  Fashion  un 
derstands  itself  ;  good-breeding  and  personal  supe 
riority  of  whatever  country  readily  fraternize  with 
those  of  every  other.  The  chiefs  of  savage  tribes 
have  distinguished  themselves  in  London  and  Paris 

O 

by  the  purity  of  their  tournure. 

To  say  what  good  of  fashion  we  can,  it  rests  on 
reality,  and  hates  nothing  so  much  as  pretenders ; 
to  exclude  and  mystify  pretenders  and  send  them 
into  everlasting  '  Coventry,'  is  its  delight.  We 
contemn  in  turn  every  other  gift  of  men  of  the 
world;  but  the  habit  even  in  little  and  the  least 
matters  of  not  appealing  to  any  but  our  own  sense 
of  propriety,  constitutes  the  foundation  of  all  chiv 
alry.  There  is  almost  no  kind  of  self-reliance,  so 
it  be  sane  and  proportioned,  which  fashion  does  not 
occasionally  adopt  and  give  it  the  freedom  of  its 
saloons.  A  sainted  soul  is  always  elegant,  and,  if 
it  will,  passes  unchallenged  into  the  most  guarded 
ring.  But  so  will  Jock  the  teamster  pass,  in  some 
crisis  that  brings  him  thither,  and  find  favor,  as 
long  as  his  head  is  not  giddy  with  the  new  circum 
stance,  and  the  iron  shoes  do  not  wish  to  dance  in 


MANNERS.  129 

waltzes  and  cotillons.  For  there  is  nothing  settled 
in  manners,  but  the  laws  of  behavior  yield  to  the 
energy  of  the  individual.  The  maiden  at  her  first 
ball,  the  countryman  at  a  city  dinner,  believes  that 
there  is  a  ritual  according  to  which  every  act  and 
compliment  must  be  performed,  or  the  failing  party 
must  be  cast  out  of  this  presence.  Later  they  learn 
that  good  sense  and  character  make  their  own  forms 
every  moment,  and  speak  or  abstain,  take  wine  or 
refuse  it,  stay  or  go,  sit  in  a  chair  or  sprawl  with 
children  on  the  floor,  or  stand  on  their  head,  or 
what  else  soever,  in  a  new  and  aboriginal  way ;  and 
that  strong  will  is  always  in  fashion,  let  who  will 
be  unfashionable.  All  that  fashion  demands  is 
composure  and  self-content.  A  circle  of  men  per 
fectly  well-bred  would  be  a  company  of  sensible 
persons  in  which  every  man's  native  manners  and 
character  appeared.  If  the  fashionist  have  not  this 
quality,  he  is  nothing.  We  are  such  lovers  of  self- 
reliance  that  we  excuse  in  a  man  many  sins  if  he 
will  show  us  a  complete  satisfaction  in  his  position, 
which  asks  no  leave  to  be,  of  mine,  or  any  man's 
good  opinion.  But  any  deference  to  some  eminent 
man  or  woman  of  the  world,  forfeits  all  privilege 
of  nobility.  He  is  an  underling:  I  have  nothing 
to  do  with  him  ;  I  will  speak  with  his  master.  A 
man  should  not  go  where  he  cannot  carry  his  whole 
sphere  or  society  with  him,  —  not  bodily,  the  whole 


130  MANNERS. 

circle  of  his  friends,  but  atmospherically.  He 
should  preserve  in  a  new  company  the  same  atti 
tude  of  mind  and  reality  of  relation  which  his  daily 
associates  draw  him  to,  else  he  is  shorn  of  his  best 
beams,  and  will  be  an  orphan  in  the  merriest  club. 
"  If  you  could  see  Vich  Ian  Vohr  with  his  tail  on  ! 
But  Vich  Ian  Vohr  must  always  carry  his 
belongings  in  some  fashion,  if  not  added  as  honor, 
then  severed  as  disgrace. 

There  will  always  be  in  society  certain  persons 
who  are  mercuries  of  its  approbation,  and  whose 
glance  will  at  any  time  determine  for  the  curious 
their  standing  in  the  world.  These  are  the  cham 
berlains  of  the  lesser  gods.  Accept  their  coldness 
as  an  omen  of  grace  with  the  loftier  deities,  and 
allow  them  all  their  privilege.  They  are  clear  in 
their  office,  nor  could  they  be  thus  formidable  with 
out  their  own  merits.  But  do  not  measure  the  im 
portance  of  this  class  by  their  pretension,  or  imag 
ine  that  a  fop  can  be  the  dispenser  of  honor  and 
shame.  They  pass  also  at  their  just  rate  ;  for  how 
can  they  otherwise,  in  circles  which  exist  as  a  sort 
of  herald's  office  for  the  sifting  of  character  ? 

As  the  first  thing  man  requires  of  man  is  reality, 
so  that  appears  in  all  the  forms  of  society.  We 
pointedly,  and  by  name,  introduce  the  parties  to 
each  other.  Know  you  before  all  heaven  and  earth, 
that  this  is  Andrew,  and  this  is  Gregory,  —  they 


MANNERS.  131 

look  each  other  in  the  eye  ;  they  grasp  each  other's 
hand,  to  identify  and  signalize  each  other.  It  is  a 
great  satisfaction.  A  gentleman  never  dodges ;  his 
eyes  look  straight  forward,  and  he  assures  the  other 
party,  first  of  all,  that  he  has  been  met.  For  what 
is  it  that  we  seek,  in  so  many  visits  and  hospitali 
ties  ?  Is  it  your  draperies,  pictures,  and  decora 
tions  ?  Or  do  we  not  insatiably  ask,  Was  a  man 
in  the  house  ?  I  may  easily  go  into  a  great  house 
hold  where  there  is  much  substance,  excellent  pro 
vision  for  comfort,  luxury,  and  taste,  and  yet  not 
encounter  there  any  Amphitryon  who  shall  subor 
dinate  these  appendages.  I  may  go  into  a  cottage, 
and  find  a  farmer  who  feels  that  he  is  the  man  I 
have  come  to  see,  and  fronts  me  accordingly.  It 
was  therefore  a  very  natural  point  of  old  feudal 
etiquette  that  a  gentleman  who  received  a  visit, 
though  it  were  of  his  sovereign,  should  not  leave 
his  roof,  but  should  wait  his  arrival  at  the  door  of 
his  house.  No  house,  though  it  were  the  Tuileries 
or  the  Escurial,  is  good  for  anything  without  a 
master.  And  yet  we  are  not  often  gratified  by  this 
hospitality.  Every  body  we  know  surrounds  him 
self  with  a  fine  house,  fine  books,  conservatory,  gar 
dens,  equipage  and  all  manner  of  toys,  as  screens 
to  interpose  between  himself  and  his  guest.  Does 
it  not  seem  as  if  man  was  of  a  very  sly,  elusive  na 
ture,  and  dreaded  nothing  so  much  as  a  full  ren' 


132  MANNERS. 

centre  front  to  front  with  his  fellow  ?  It  were  un 
merciful,  I  know,  quite  to  abolish  the  use  of  these 
screens,  which  are  of  eminent  convenience,  whether 
the  guest  is  too  great  or  too  little.  We  call  to 
gether  many  friends  who  keep  each  other  in  play, 
or  by  luxuries  and  ornaments  we  amuse  the  young 
people,  and  guard  our  retirement.  Or  if  perchance 
a  searching  realist  comes  to  our  gate,  before  whose 
eye  we  have  no  care  to  stand,  then  again  we  run 
to  our  curtain,  and  hide  ourselves  as  Adam  at  the 
voice  of  the  Lord  God  in  the  garden.  Cardinal 
Caprara,  the  Pope's  legate  at  Paris,  defended  him 
self  from  the  glances  of  Napoleon  by  an  immense 
pair  of  green  spectacles.  Napoleon  remarked  them, 
and  speedily  managed  to  rally  them  off :  and  yet 
Napoleon,  in  his  turn,  was  not  great  enough,  with 
eight  hundred  thousand  troops  at  his  back,  to  face 
a  pair  of  f reeborn  eyes,  but  fenced  himself  with  eti 
quette  and  within  triple  barriers  of  reserve ;  and, 
as  all  the  world  knows  from  Madame  de  Stael,  was 
wont,  when  he  found  himself  observed,  to  discharge 
his  face  of  all  expression.  But  emperors  and  rich 
men  are  by  no  means  the  most  skilful  masters  of 
good  manners.  No  rentroll  nor  army-list  can  dig 
nify  skulking  and  dissimulation ;  and  the  first  point 
of  courtesy  must  always  be  truth,  as  really  all  the 
forms  of  good  breeding  point  that  way. 

I  have  just  been  reading,  in  Mr.  Hazlitt's  trans- 


MANNERS. 

lation,  Montaigne's  account  of  his  journey  into 
Italy,  and  am  struck  with  nothing  more  agreeably 
than  the  self-respecting  fashions  of  the  time.  His 
arrival  in  each  place,  the  arrival  of  a  gentleman  of 
France,  is  an  event  of  some  consequence.  Wher 
ever  he  goes  he  pays  a  visit  to  whatever  prince  or 
gentleman  of  note  resides  upon  his  road,  as  a  duty 
to  himself  and  to  civilization.  When  he  leaves  any 
house  in  which  he  has  lodged  for  a  few  weeks,  he 
causes  his  arms  to  be  painted  and  hung  up  as  a  per 
petual  sign  to  the  house,  as  was  the  custom  of  gen 
tlemen. 

The  complement  of  this  graceful  self-respect,  and 
that  of  all  the  points  of  good  breeding  I  most  re 
quire  and  insist  upon,  is  deference.  I  like  that 
every  chair  should  be  a  throne,  and  hold  a  king.  I 
prefer  a  tendency  to  stateliness  to  an  excess  of  fel 
lowship.  Let  the  incommunicable  objects  of  nature 
and  the  metaphysical  isolation  of  man  teach  us  in 
dependence.  Let  us  not  be  too  much  acquainted. 
I  would  have  a  man  enter  his  house  through  a  hall 
filled  with  heroic  and  sacred  sculptures,  that  he 
might  not  want  the  hint  of  tranquillity  and  self- 
poise.  We  should  meet  each  morning  as  from  for 
eign  countries,  and,  spending  the  day  together, 
should  depart  at  night,  as  into  foreign  countries. 
In  all  things  I  would  have  the  island  of  a  man  in 
violate.  Let  us  sit  apart  as  the  gods,  talking  from 


134  MANNERS. 

peak  to  peak  all  round  Olympus.  No  degree  of 
affection  need  invade  this  religion.  This  is  myrrh 
and  rosemary  to  keep  the  other  sweet.  Lovers 
should  guard  their  strangeness.  If  they  forgive  too 
much,  all  slides  into  confusion  and  meanness.  It 
is  easy  to  push  this  deference  to  a  Chinese  etiquette  ; 
but  coolness  and  absence  of  heat  and  haste  indicate 
fine  qualities.  A  gentleman  makes  no  noise ;  a 
lady  is  serene.  Proportionate  is  our  disgust  at 
those  invaders  who  fill  a  studious  house  with  blast 
and  running,  to  secure  some  paltry  convenience. 
Not  less  I  dislike  a  low  sympathy  of  each  with  his 
neighbor's  needs.  Must  we  have  a  good  understand 
ing  with  one  another's  palates  ?  as  foolish  people 
who  have  lived  long  together  know  when  each  wants 
salt  or  sugar.  I  pray  my  companion,  if  he  wishes 
for  bread,  to  ask  me  for  bread,  and  if  he  wishes  for 
sassafras  or  arsenic,  to  ask  me  for  them,  and  not  to 
hold  out  his  plate  as  if  I  knew  already.  Every  nat 
ural  function  can  be  dignified  by  deliberation  and 
privacy.  Let  us  leave  hurry  to  slaves.  The  com 
pliments  and  ceremonies  of  our  breeding  should  re 
call,  however  remotely,  the  grandeur  of  our  destiny. 
The  flower  of  courtesy  does  not  very  well  bide 
handling,  but  if  we  dare  to  open  another  leaf  and 
explore  what  parts  go  to  its  conformation,  we  shall 
find  also  an  intellectual  quality.  To  the  leaders  of 
men,  the  brain  as  well  as  the  flesh  and  the  heart 


MANNERS.  135 

must  furnish  a  proportion.  Defect  in  manners  is 
usually  the  defect  of  fine  perceptions.  Men  are  too 
coarsely  made  for  the  delicacy  of  beautiful  carriage 
and  customs.  It  is  not  quite  sufficient  to  good- 
breeding,  a  union  of  kindness  and  independence. 
We  imperatively  require  a  perception  of,  and  a 
homage  to  beauty  in  our  companions.  Other  vir 
tues  are  in  request  in  the  field  and  workyard,  but  a 
certain  degree  of  taste  is  not  to  be  spared  in  those 
we  sit  with.  I  could  better  eat  with  one  who  did 
not  respect  the  truth  or  the  laws  than  with  a  sloven 
and  unpresentable  person.  Moral  qualities  rule  the 
world,  but  at  short  distances  the  senses  are  despotic.. 
The  same  discrimination  of  fit  and  fair  runs  out,  if 
with  less  rigor,  into  all  parts  of  life.  The  average 
spirit  of  the  energetic  class  is  good  sense,  acting 
under  certain  limitations  and  to  certain  ends.  It 
entertains  every  natural  gift.  Social  in  its  nature, 
it  respects  everything  which  tends  to  unite  men.  It 
delights  in  measure.  The  love  of  beauty  is  mainly 
the  love  of  measure  or  proportion.  The  person  who 
screams,  or  uses  the  superlative  degree,  or  converses 
with  heat,  puts  whole  drawing-rooms  to  flight.  If 
you  wish  to  be  loved,  love  measure.  You  must 
have  genius  or  a  prodigious  usefulness  if-  you  will 
hide  the  want  of  measure.  This  perception  comes 
in  to  polish  and  perfect  the  parts  of  the  social  in 
strument.  Society  will  pardon  much  to  genius  and 


136  MANNERS. 

special  gifts,  but,  being  in  its  nature  a  convention, 
it  loves  what  is  conventional,  or  what  belongs  to 
coming  together.  That  makes  the  good  and  bad  of 
manners,  namely  what  helps  or  hinders  fellowship. 
For  fashion  is  not  good  sense  absolute,  but  relative  ; 
not  good  sense  private,  but  good  sense  entertaining 
company.  It  hates  corners  and  sharp  points  of 
character,  hates  quarrelsome,  egotistical,  solitary, 
and  gloomy  people ;  hates  whatever  can  interfere 
with  total  blending  of  parties  ;  whilst  it  values  all 
peculiarities  as  in  the  highest  degree  refreshing, 
which  can  consist  with  good  fellowship.  And  be 
sides  the  general  infusion  of  wit  to  heighten  civil 
ity,  the  direct  splendor  of  intellectual  power  is  ever 
welcome  in  fine  society  as  the  costliest  addition  to 
its  rule  and  its  credit. 

The  dry  light  must  shine  in  to  adorn  our  festival, 
but  it  must  be  tempered  and  shaded,  or  that  will 
also  offend.  Accuracy  is  essential  to  beauty,  and 
quick  perceptions  to  politeness,  but  not  too  quick 
perceptions.  One  may  be  too  punctual  and  too 
precise.  He  must  leave  the  omniscience  of  busi 
ness  at  the  door,  when  he  comes  into  the  palace  of 
beauty.  Society  loves  Creole  natures,  and  sleepy 
languishing  manners,  so  that  they  cover  sense, 
grace  and  good-will:  the  air  of  drowsy  strength, 
which  disarms  criticism ;  perhaps  because  such  a 
person  seems  to  reserve  himself  for  the  best  of  the 


MANNERS.  137 

game,  and  not  spend  himself  on  surfaces ;  an  ignor 
ing  eye,  which  does  not  see  the  annoyances,  shifts, 
and  inconveniences  that  cloud  the  brow  and  smother 
the  voice  of  the  sensitive. 

Therefore  besides  personal  force  and  so  much 
perception  as  constitutes  unerring  taste,  society  de 
mands  in  its  patrician  class  another  element  al 
ready  intimated,  which  it  significantly  terms  good 
nature,  —  expressing  all  degrees  of  generosity,  from 
the  lowest  willingness  and  faculty  to  oblige,  up  to 
the  heights  of  magnanimity  and  love.  Insight  we 
must  have,  or  we  shall  run  against  one  another  and 
miss  the  way  to  our  food ;  but  intellect  is  selfish 
and  barren.  The  secret  of  success  in  society  is  a  \ 
certain  heartiness  and  sympathy.  A  man  who  is 
not  happy  in  the  company  cannot  find  any  word 
in  his  memory  that  will  fit  the  occasion.  All  his 
information  is  a  little  impertinent.  A  man  who  is 
happy  there,  finds  in  every  turn  of  the  conversa 
tion  equally  lucky  occasions  for  the  introduction  of 
that  which  he  has  to  say.  The  favorites  of  society, 
and  what  it  calls  whole  souls,  are  able  men  and  of 
more  spirit  than  wit,  who  have  no  *  uncomfortable 
egotism,  but  who  exactly  fill  the  hour  and  the  com 
pany  ;  contented  and  contenting,  at  a  marriage  or  a 
funeral,  a  ball  or  a  jury,  a  water-party  or  a  shoot 
ing-match.  England,  which  is  rich  in  gentlemen, 
furnished,  in  the  beginning  of  the  present  century, 


138  MANNERS. 

a  good  model  of  that  genius  which  the  world  loves, 
in  Mr.  Fox,  who  added  to  his  great  abilities  the 
most  social  disposition  and  real  love  of  men.  Par 
liamentary  history  has  few  better  passages  than  tlio 
debate  in  which  Burke  and  Fox  separated  in  the 
House  of  Commons  ;  when  Fox  urged  on  his  old 
friend  the  claims  of  old  friendship  with  such  ten 
derness  that  the  house  was  moved  to  tears.  An 
other  anecdote  is  so  close  to  my  matter,  that  I  must 
hazard  the  story.  A  tradesman  who  had  long 
dunned  him  for  a  note  of  three  hundred  guineas, 
found  him  one  day  counting  gold,  and  demanded 
payment :  —  "  No,"  said  Fox,  "  I  owe  this  money 
to  Sheridan  ;  it  is  a  debt  of  honor ;  if  an  accident 
should  happen  to  me,  he  has  nothing  to  show." 
"  Then,"  said  the  creditor,  "  I  change  my  debt  into 
a  debt  of  honor,"  and  tore  the  note  in  pieces.  Fox 
thanked  the  man  for  his  confidence  and  paid  him, 
saying,  "  his  debt  was  of  older  standing,  and  Sheri 
dan  must  wait."  Lover  of  liberty,  friend  of  the 
Hindoo,  friend  of  the  African  slave,  he  possessed  a 
great  personal  popularity ;  and  Napoleon  said  of 
him  on  the  occasion  of  his  visit  to  Paris,  in  1805, 
"  Mr.  Fox  will  always  hold  the  first  place  in  an 
assembly  at  the  Tuileries." 

We  may  easily  seem  ridiculous  in  our  eulogy  of 
courtesy,  whenever  we  insist  on  benevolence  as  its 
foundation.  The  painted  phantasm  Fashion  rises  to 


MANNERS.  139 

cast  a  species  of  derision  on  what  we  say.  But  I 
will  neither  be  driven  from  some  allowance  to  Fash 
ion  as  a  symbolic  institution,  nor  from  the  belief 
that  love  is  the  basis  of  courtesy.  We  must  obtain 
that,  if  we  can  ;  but  by  all  means  we  must  affirm 
this.  Life  owes  much  of  its  spirit  to  these  sharp 
contrasts.  Fashion,  which  affects  to  be  honor,  is 
often,  in  all  men's  experience,  only  a  ballroom-code. 
Yet  so  long  as  it  is  the  highest  circle  in  the  imagi 
nation  of  the  best  heads  on  the  planet,  there  is 
something  necessary  and  excellent  in  it ;  for  it  is 
not  to  be  supposed  that  men  have  agreed  to  be  the 
dupes  of  anything  preposterous  ;  and  the  respect 
which  these  mysteries  inspire  in  the  most  rude  and 
sylvan  characters,  and  the  curiosity  with  which  de 
tails  of  high  life  are  read,  betray  the  universality 
of  the  love  of  cultivated  manners.  I  know  that  a 
comic  disparity  would  be  felt,  if  we  should  enter 
the  acknowledged  '  first  circles '  and  apply  these 
terrific  standards  of  justice,  beauty,  and  benefit  to 
the  individuals  actually  found  there.  Monarchs 
and  heroes,  sages  and  lovers,  these  gallants  are  not. 
Fashion  has  many  classes  and  many  rules  of  proba 
tion  and  admission,  and  not  the  best  alone.  There 
is  not  only  the  right  of  conquest,  which  genius  pre 
tends, —  the  individual  demonstrating  his  natural 
aristocracy  best  of  the  best ;  —  but  less  claims  will 
pass  for  the  time ;  for  Fashion  loves  lions,  and 


140  MANNERS. 

points  like  Circe  to  her  horned  company.  This 
gentleman  is  this  afternoon  arrived  from  Denmark  ; 
and  that  is  my  Lord  Eide,  who  came  yesterday 
from  Bagdat ;  here  is  Captain  Friese,  from  Cape 
Turnagain ;  and  Captain  Symmes,  from  the  inte 
rior  of  the  earth  ;  and  Monsieur  Jovaire,  who  came 
down  this  morning  in  a  balloon  ;  Mr.  Hobnail,  the 
reformer ;  and  Reverend  Jul  Bat,  who  has  con 
verted  the  whole  torrid  zone  in  his  Sunday  school  ; 
and  Signor  Torre  del  Greco,  who  extinguished  Ve 
suvius  by  pouring  into  it  the  Bay  of  Naples  ;  Spahi, 
the  Persian  ambassador ;  and  Tul  Wil  Shan,  the 
exiled  nabob  of  Nepaul,  whose  saddle  is  the  new 
moon.  —  But  these  are  monsters  of  one  day,  and 
to-morrow  will  be  dismissed  to  their  holes  and 
dens  ;  for  in  these  rooms  every  chair  is  waited  for. 
The  artist,  the  scholar,  and,  in  general,  the  clerisy, 
win  their  way  up  into  these  places  and  get  repre 
sented  here,  somewhat  on  this  footing  of  conquest. 
Another  mode  is  to  pass  through  all  the  degrees, 
spending  a  year  and  a  day  in  St.  Michael's  Square, 
being  steeped  in  Cologne  water,  and  perfumed,  and 
dined,  and  introduced,  and  properly  grounded  in 
all  the  biography  and  politics  and  anecdotes  of  the 
boudoirs. 

Yet  these  fineries  may  have  grace  and  wit.  Let 
there  be  grotesque  sculpture  about  the  gates  and 
offices  of  temples.  Let  the  creed  and  command- 


MANNERS.  141 

ments  even  have  the  saucy  homage  of  parody.  The 
forms  of  politeness  universally  express  benevolence 
iii  superlative  degrees.  What  if  they  are  in  the 
mouths  of  selfish  men,  and  used  as  means  of  self 
ishness  ?  What  if  the  false  gentleman  almost 
bows  the  true  out  of  the  world  ?  What  if  the  false 
gentleman  contrives  so  to  address  his  companion 
as  civilly  to  exclude  all  others  from  his  discourse, 
and  also  to  make  them  feel  excluded  ?  Real  ser 
vice  will  not  lose  its  nobleness.  All  generosity  is 
not  merely  French  and  sentimental;  nor  is  it  to 
be  concealed  that  living  blood  and  a  passion  of 
kindness  does  at  last  distinguish  God's  gentleman 
from  Fashion's.  The  epitaph  of  Sir  Jenkin  Grout 
is  not  wholly  unintelligible  to  the  present  age : 
"  Here  lies  Sir  Jenkin  Grout,  who  loved  his  friend 
and  persuaded  his  enemy :  what  his  mouth  ate,  his 
hand  paid  for :  what  his  servants  robbed,  he  re 
stored  :  if  a  woman  gave  him  pleasure,  he  sup 
ported  her  in  pain :  he  never  forgot  his  children ; 
and  whoso  touched  his  finger,  drew  after  it  his 
whole  body."  Even  the  line  of  heroes  is  not  ut 
terly  extinct.  There  is  still  ever  some  admirable 
person  in  plain  clothes,  standing  on  the  wharf,  who 
jumps  in  to  rescue  a  drowning  man  ;  there  is  still 
some  absurd  inventor  of  charities ;  some  guide  and 
comforter  of  runaway  slaves ;  some  friend  of  Po 
land  ;  some  Philhellene  ;  some  fanatic  who  plants 


142  MANNERS. 

shade-trees  for  the  second  and  third  generation, 
and  orchards  when  he  is  grown  old ;  some  well-con 
cealed  piety ;  some  just  man  happy  in  an  ill  fame  ; 
some  youth  ashamed  of  the  favors  of  fortune  and 
impatiently  casting  them  011  other  shoulders.  And 
these  are  the  centres  of  society,  on  which  it  returns 
for  fresh  impulses.  These  are  the  creators  of 
Fashion,  which  is  an  attempt  to  organize  beauty 
of  behavior.  The  beautiful  and  the  generous  are, 
in  the  theory,  the  doctors  and  apostles  of  this 
church :  Scipio,  and  the  Cid,  and  Sir  Philip  Sid 
ney,  and  Washington,  and  every  pure  and  valiant 
heart  who  worshipped  Beauty  by  word  and  by 
deed.  The  persons  who  constitute  the  natural 
aristocracy  are  not  found  in  the  actual  aristocracy, 
or  only  on  its  edge ;  as  the  chemical  energy  of  the 
spectrum  is  found  to  be  greatest  just  outside  of  the 
spectrum.  Yet  that  is  the  infirmity  of  the  senes 
chals,  who  do  not  know  their  sovereign  when  he 
appears.  The  theory  of  society  supposes  the  exist 
ence  and  sovereignty  of  these.  It  divines  afar  off 
their  coming.  It  says  with  the  elder  gods,  — 

"  As  Heaven  and  Earth  are  fairer  far 
Than  Chaos  and  blank  Darkness,  though  once  chiefs; 
And  as  we  show  beyond  that  Heaven  and  Earth, 
In  form  and  shape  compact  and  beautiful; 
So,  on  our  heels  a  fresh  perfection  treads; 
A  power,  more  strong  hi  beauty,  born  of  us, 


MANNERS.  143 

And  fated  to  excel  us,  as  we  pass 
In  glory  that  old  Darkness: 

for,  't  is  the  eternal  law, 

That  first  in  beauty  shall  be  first  in  might." 

Therefore,  within  the  ethnical  circle  of  good  so 
ciety  there  is  a  narrower  and  higher  circle,  concen 
tration  of  its  light,  and  flower  of  courtesy,  to  which 
there  is  always  a  tacit  appeal  of  pride  and  refer 
ence,  as  to  its  inner  and  imperial  court ;  the  parlia 
ment  of  love  and  chivalry.  And  this  is  constituted 
of  those  persons  in  whom  heroic  dispositions  are 
native ;  with  the  love  of  beauty,  the  delight  in  so 
ciety,  and  the  power  to  embellish  the  passing  day. 
If  the  individuals  who  compose  the  purest  circles  of 
aristocracy  in  Europe,  the  guarded  blood  of  cen 
turies,  should  pass  in  review,  in  such  manner  as 
that  we  could  at  leisure  and  critically  inspect  their 
behavior,  we  might  find  no  gentleman  and  no  lady ; 
for  although  excellent  specimens  of  courtesy  and 
high-breeding  would  gratify  us  in  the  assemblage, 
in  the  particulars  we  should  detect  offence.  Be 
cause  elegance  comes  of  no  breeding,  but  of  birth} 
There  must  be  romance  of  character,  or  the  most 
fastidious  exclusion  of  impertinencies  will  not  avail. 
It  must  be  genius  which  takes  that  direction :  it 
must  be  not  courteous,  but  courtesy.  High  be 
havior  is  as  rare  in  fiction  as  it  is  in  fact.  Scott  is 
praised  for  the  fidelity  with  which  he  painted  the 


144  MANNERS. 

demeanor  and  conversation  of  th£  superior  classes. 
Certainly,  kings  and  queens,  nobles  and  great  la 
dies,  had  some  right  to  complain  of  the  absurdity 
that  had  been  put  in  their  mouths  before  the  days 
of  Waverley;  but  neither  does  Scott's  dialogue 
bear  criticism.  His  lords  brave  each  other  in 
smart  epigrammatic  speeches,  but  the  dialogue  is 
in  costume,  and  does  not  please  on  the  second 
reading  :  it  is  not  warm  with  life.  In  Shakspeare 
alone  the  speakers  do  not  strut  and  bridle,  the  dia 
logue  is  easily  great,  and  he  adds  to  so  many  titles 
that  of  being  the  best-bred  man  in  England  and 
in  Christendom. :  Once  or  twice  in  a  lifetime  we 
are  permitted  to  enjoy  the  charm  of  noble  manners, 
in  the  presence  of  a  man  or  woman  who  have  no 
bar  in  their  nature,  but  whose  character  emanates 
freely  in  their  word  and  gesture.  A  beautiful 
form  is  better  than  a  beautiful  face;  a  beautiful 
behavior  is  better  than  a  beautiful  form :  it  gives 
a  higher  pleasure  than  statues  or  pictures  ;  it*  is  the 
finest  of  the  fine  arts.  A  man  is  but  a  little  thing 
in  the  midst  of  the  objects  of  nature,  yet,  by  the 
moral  quality  radiating  from  his  countenance  he 
may  abolish  all  considerations  of  magnitude,  and 
in  his  manners  equal  the  majesty  of  the  world.  I 
have  seen  an  individual  whose  manners,  though 
wholly  within  the  conventions  of  elegant  society, 
were  never  learned  there,  but  were  original  and 


MANNERS.  145 

commanding  and  held  out  protection  and  prosper 
ity  ;  one  who  did  not  need  the  aid  of  a  court-suit, 
but  carried  the  holiday  in  his  eye ;  who  exhilarated 
the  fancy  by  flinging-  wide  the  doors  of  new  modes 
of  existence;  who  shook  off  the  captivity  of  eti 
quette,  with  happy,  spirited  bearing,  good-natured 
and  free  as  Robin  Hood ;  yet  with  the  port  of  an 
emperor,  if  need  be,  —  calm,  serious,  and  fit  to 
stand  the  gaze  of  millions. 

The  open  air  and  the  fields,  the  stre^-alid  pub 
lic  chambers  are  the  places  whe^rman  executes  his 
will ;  let  him  yield,  or  divide  the  sceptre  at  the  door 
of  the  house.  Woman,  with  her  instinct  of  behav 
ior,  instantly  detects  in  man  a  love  of  trifles,  any 
coldness  or  imbecility,  or,  in  short,  any  want  of 
that  large,  flowing,  and  magnanimous  deportment 
which  is  indispensable  as  an  exterior  in  the  hall. 
Our  American  institutions  have  been  friendly  to 
her,  and  at  this  moment  I  esteem  it  a  chief  felicity 
of  this  country,  that  it  excels  in  women.  A  cer 
tain  awkward  consciousness  of  inferiority  in  the 
men  may  give  rise  to  the  new  chivalry  in  behalf  of 
"Woman's  Eights.  Certainly  let  her  be  as  much 
better  placed  in  the  laws  and  in  social  forms  as  the 
most  zealous  reformer  can  ask,  but  I  confide  so  en 
tirely  in  her  inspiring  and  musical  nature,  that  I 
believe  only  herself  can  show  us  how  she  shall  be 
served.  The  wonderful  generosity  of  her  senti- 

VOL.   III.  10 


146  MANNERS. 

ments  raises  her  at  times  into  heroical  and  godlike 
regions,  and  verifies  the  pictures  of  Minerva,  Juno, 
or  Polymnia;  and  by  the  firmness  with  which  she 
treads  her  upward  path,  she  convinces  the  coarsest 
calculators  that  another  road  exists  than  that  which 
their  feet  know.  But  besides  those  who  make 
good  in  our  imagination  the  place  of  muses  and  of 
Delphic  Sibyls,  are  there  not  women  who  fill  our 
vase  with  wine  and  roses  to  the  brim,  so  that  tLj 
wine  runs  over  and  fills  the  house  with  perfume  ; 
who  inspire  us  with  courtesy  ;  who  unloose  our 
tongues  and  we  speak ;  who  anoint  our  eyes  and 
we  see  ?  We  say  things  we  never  thought  to  have 
said ;  for  once,  our  walls  of  habitual  reserve  van 
ished  and  left  us  at  large  ;  we  were  children  play 
ing  with  children  in  a  wide  field  of  flowers.  Steep 
us,  we  cried,  in  these  influences,  for  days,  for 
weeks,  and  we  shall  be  sunny  poets  and  will  write 
out  in  many-colored  words  the  romance  that  you 
are.  Was  it  Hafiz  or  Firdousi  that  said  of  his 
Persian  Lilla,  She  was  an  elemental  force,  and  as 
tonished  me  by  her  amount  of  life,  when  I  saw  her 
day  after  day  radiating,  every  instant,  redundant 
joy  and  grace  011  all  around  her  ?  She  was  a  sol 
vent  powerful  to  reconcile  all  heterogeneous  per 
sons  into  one  society :  like  air  or  water,  an  element  ~ 
of  such  a  great  range  of  affinities  that  it  combines 
readily  with  a  thousand  substances.  Where  she  is 


MANNERS.  147 

present  all  others  will  be  more  than  they  are  wont. 
She  was  a  unit  and  whole,  so  that  whatsoever  she 
did,  became  her.  She  had  too  much  sympathy  and 
desire  to  please,  than  that  you  could  say  her  man 
ners  were  marked  with  dignity,  yet  no  princess 
Gould  surpass  her  clear  and  erect  demeanor  on  each 
occasion.  She  did  not  study  the  Persian  grammar, 
nor  the  books  of  the  seven  poets,  but  all  the  poems 
of  the  seven  seemed  to  be  written  upon  her.  For 
though  the  bias  of  her  nature  was  not  to  thought, 
but  to  sympathy,  yet  was  she  so  perfect  in  her  own 
nature  as  to  meet  intellectual  persons  by  the  ful 
ness  of  her  heart,  warming  them  by  her  sentiments ; 
believing,  as  she  did,  that  by  dealing  nobly  with 
all,  all  would  show  themselves  noble. 

I  know  that  this  Byzantine  pile  of  chivalry  or 
Fashion,  which  seems  so  fair  and  picturesque  to 
those  who  look  at  the  contemporary  facts  for  sci 
ence  or  for  entertainment,  is  not  equally  pleasant 
to  all  spectators.  The  constitution  of  our  society 
makes  it  a  giant's  castle  to  the  ambitious  youth 
'who  have  not  found  their  names  enrolled  in  its 
Golden  Book,  and  whom  it  has  excluded  from  its 
coveted  honors  and  privileges.  They  have  yet  to 
learn  that  its  seeming  grandeur  is  shadowy  and  rel 
ative  :  it  is  great  by  their  allowance  ;  its  proudest 
gates  will  fly  open  at  the  approach  of  their  courage 


148  MANNERS. 

and  virtue.  For  the  present  distress,  however,  of 
those  who  are  predisposed  to  suffer  from  the  tyr 
annies  of  this  caprice,  there  are  easy  remedies.  To 
remove  your  residence  a  couple  of  miles,  or  at  most 
four,  will  commonly  relieve  the  most  extreme  sus 
ceptibility.  For  the  advantages  which  fashion  val 
ues  are  plants  which  thrive  in  very  confined  locali 
ties,  in  a  few  streets  namely.  Out  of  this  precinct 
they  go  for  nothing ;  are  of  no  use  in  the  farm,  in 
the  forest,  in  the  market,  in  war,  in  the  nuptial  so 
ciety,  in  the  literary  or  scientific  circle,  at  sea,  in 
friendship,  in  the  heaven  of  thought  or  virtue. 

But  we  have  lingered  long  enough  in  these 
painted  courts.  The  worth  of  the  thing  signified 
must  vindicate  our  taste  for  the  emblem.  Every 
thing  that  is  called  fashion  and  courtesy  hum 
bles  itself  before  the  cause  and  fountain  of  honor, 
creator  of  titles  and  dignities,  namely  the  heart 
of  love.  This  is  the  royal  blood,  this  the  fire, 
which,  in  all  countries  and  contingencies,  will  work 
after  its  kind  and  conquer  and  expand  all  that 
approaches  it.  This  gives  new  meanings  to  every 
fact.  This  impoverishes  the  rich,  suffering  no  gran 
deur  but  its  own.  What  is  rich  ?  Are  you  rich 
enough  to  help  anybody?  to  succor  the  unfashion 
able  and  the  eccentric?  rich  enough  to  make  the, 
Canadian  in  his  wagon,  the  itinerant  with  his  con 
sul's  paper  which  commends  him  "  To  the  chari- 


MANNERS.  149 

table,"  the  swarthy  Italian  with  his  few  broken 
words  of  English,  the  lame  pauper  hunted  by  over 
seers  from  town  to  town,  even  the  poor  insane  or 
besotted  wreck  of  man  or  woman,  feel  the  noble  ex 
ception  of  your  presence  and  your  house  from  the 
general  bleakness  and  stoniness ;  to  make  such  feel 
that  they  were  greeted  with  a  voice  which  made 
them  both  remember  and  hope  ?  What  is  vulgar 
but  to  refuse  the  claim  on  acute  and  conclusive 
reasons  ?  What  is  gentle,  but  to  allow  it,  and  give 
their  heart  and  yours  one  holiday  from  the  national 
caution  ?  Without  the  rich  heart,  wealth  is  an 
ugly  beggar.  The  king  of  Schiraz  could  not  afford 
to  be  so  bountiful  as  the  poor  Osman  who  dwelt 
at  his  gate.  Osman  had  a  humanity  so  broad  and 
deep  that  although  his  speech  was  so  bold  and  free 
with  the  Koran  as  to  disgust  all  the  dervishes,  yet 
was  there  never  a  poor  outcast,  eccentric,  or  insane 
man,  some  fool  who  had  cut  off  his  beard,  or  who 
had  been  mutilated  under  a  vow,  or  had  a  pet  mad 
ness  in  his  brain,  but  fled  at  once  to  him ;  that  great 
heart  lay  there  so  sunny  and  hospitable  in  the  cen 
tre  of  the  country,  that  it  seemed  as  if  the  instinct 
of  all  sufferers  drew  them  to  his  side.  And  the 
madness  which  he  harbored  he  did  not  share.  Is 
not  this  to  be  rich  ?  this  only  to  be  rightly  rich  ? 

But  I  shall  hear  without  pain  that  I  play  the 
courtier  very  ill,  and  talk  of  that  which  I  do  not 


150  MANNERS. 

well  understand.  It  is  easy  to  see  that  what  is 
called  by  distinction  society  and  fashion  has  good 
laws  as  well  as  bad,  has  much  that  is  necessary, 
and  much  that  is  absurd.  Too  good  for  banning, 
and  too  bad  for  blessing,  it  reminds  us  of  a  tra 
dition  of  the  pagan  mythology,  in  any  attempt  to 
settle  its  character.  '  I  overheard  Jove,  one  day,' 
said  Silenus,  '  talking  of  destroying  the  earth ;  he 
said  it  had  failed  ;  they  were  all  rogues  and  vixens, 
who  went  from  bad  to  worse,  as  fast  as  the  days 
succeeded  each  other.  Minerva  said  she  hoped  not ; 
they  were  only  ridiculous  little  creatures,  with  this 
odd  circumstance,  that  they  had  a  blur,  or  indeter 
minate  aspect,  seen  far  or  seen  near ;  if  you  called 
them  bad,  they  would  appear  so ;  if  you  called 
them  good,  they  would  appear  so;, 'and  there  was 
no  one  person  or  action  among  them  which  would 
not  puzzle  her  owl,  much  more  all  Olympus,  to 
know  whether  it  was  fundamentally  bad  or  good.' 


GIFTS. 


Gifts  of  one  who  loved  me,  — > 
'T  was  high  time  they  came  ; 
When  he  ceased  to  love  me, 
Time  they  stopped  for  shame. 


V. 

GIFTS. 


IT  is  said  that  the  world  is  in  a  state  of  bank 
ruptcy;  that  the  world  owes  the  world  more  than 
the  world  can  pay,  and  ought  to  go  into  chancery 
and  be  sold.  I  do  not  think  this  general  insolvency, 
which  involves  in  some  sort  all  the  population,  to 
be  the  reason  of  the  difficulty  experienced  at  Christ 
mas  and  New  Year  and  other  times,  in  bestowing 
gifts  ;  since  it  is  always  so  pleasant  to  be  generous, 
though  very  vexatious  to  pay  debts. '  But  the  im 
pediment  lies  in  the  choosing.  If  at  any  time  it 
comes  into  my  head  that  a  present  is  due  from  me 
to  somebody,  I  am  puzzled  what  to  give,  until  the 
opportunity  is'  gone.  Flowers  and  fruits  are  al 
ways  fit  presents  ;  flowers,  because  they  are  a  proud 
assertion  that  a  ray  of  beauty  outvalues  all  the 
utilities  of  the  world.  These  gay  natures  contrast 
with  the  somewhat  stern  countenance  of  ordinary 
nature  :  they  are  like  music  heard  out  of  a  work 
house.  .  Nature  does  not  cocker  us ;  we  are  chil 
dren,  not  pets  ;  she  is  not  fond  ;  everything  is 


154  GIFTS. 

dealt  to  us  without  fear  or  favor,  after  severe  uni 
versal  laws.  Yet  these  delicate  flowers  look  like 
the  frolic  and  interference  of  love  and  beauty. 
Men  use  to  tell  us  that  we  love  flattery  even  though 
we  are  not  deceived  by  it,  because  it  shows  that 
we  are  of  importance  enough  to  be  courted.  Some 
thing  like  that  pleasure,  the  flowers  give  us  :  what 
am  I  to  whom  these  sweet  hints  are  addressed? 
limits  are  acceptable  gifts,  because  they  are  the 
flower  of  commodities,  and  admit  of  fantastic  val 
ues  being  attached  to  them.  If  a  man  should  send 
to  me  to  come  a  hundred  miles  to  visit  him  and 
should  set  before  me  a  basket  of  fine  summer-fruit, 
I  should  think  there  was  some  proportion  between 
the  labor  and  the  reward. 

For  common  gifts,  necessity  makes  pertinences 
and  beauty  every  day,  and  one  is  glad  when  an  im 
perative  leaves  him  no  option  ;  since  if  the  man  at 
the  door  have  no  shoes,  you  have  not  to  consider 
whether  you  could  procure  him  a  paint-box.  And 
as  it  is  always  pleasing  to  see  a  man  eat  bread,  or 
drink  water,  in  the  house  or  out  of  doors,  so  it 
is  always  a.  great  satisfaction  to  supply  these  first 
wants.  Necessity  does  everything  well.  In  our  con 
dition  of  universal  dependence  it  seems  heroic  to 
let  the  petitioner  be  the  judge  of  his  necessity,  and 
to  give  all  that  is  asked,  though  at  great  inconven 
ience.  If  it  be  a  fantastic  desire,  it  is  better  to* 


GIFTS.  155 

leave  to  others  the  office  of  punishing  him.  I  can 
think  of  many  parts  I  should  prefer  playing  to  that 
of  the  Furies.  Next  to  things  of  necessity,  the 
rule  for  a  gift,  which  one  of  my  friends  prescribed, 
is  that  we  might  convey  to  some  person  that  which 
properly  belonged  to  his  character,  and  was  easily 
associated  with  him  in  thought/  But  our  tokens 
of  compliment  and  love  are  for  the  most  part  bar 
barous.  Eings  and  other  jewels  are  not  gifts,  but 
apologies  for  gifts.  The  only  gift  is  a.  portion  of 
thyself.  Thou  must  bleed  for  me.  Thereforejhe 
poet  brings  his  poem ;  the  shepherd,  his  lamb ;  the~ 


farmer,  corn ;  the  miner,  ajyejm;  the  sailor,  coral 
and  shells ;  the  painter,  his  picture;  the  girl,  a 
handkerchief  of  her  own  sewing.  This  is  right  and 
pleasing,  for  it  restores  society  in  so  far  to  the  pri 
mary  basis,  when  a  man's  biography  is  conveyed 
in  his  gift,  and  every  man's  wealth  is  an  index  of 
his  merit.  But  it  is  a  cold  lifeless  business  when 
you  go  to  the  shops  to  buy  me  something  which 
does  not  represent  your  life  and  talent,  but  a  gold 
smith's.  This  is  fit  for  kings,  and  rich  men  who 
represent  kings,  and  a  false  state  of  property,  to 
make  presents  of  gold  and  silver  stuffs,  as  a  kind 
of  symbolical  sin-offering,  or  payment  of  black 
mail. 

The  law  of  benefits  is  a  difficult  channel,  which 
requires  careful  sailing,  or  rude  boats.     It  is  not 


156  GIFTS. 

the  office  of  a  man  to  receive  gifts.  How  dare  you 
give  them  ?  We  wish  to  be  self-sustained.  We  do 
not  quite  forgive  a  giver.  The  hand  that  feeds  us 
is  in  some  danger  of  being  bitten.  We  can  receive 
anything  from  love,  for  that  is  a  way  of  receiving 
it  from  ourselves  ;  but  not  from  any  one  who  as 
sumes  to  bestow.  We  sometimes  hate  the  meat 
which  we  eat,  because  there  seems  something  of  de 
grading  dependence  in  living  by  it :  — 

"  Brother,  if  Jove  to  thee  a  present  make, 
Take  heed  that  from  his  hands  thou  nothing  take." 

We  ask  theyhola. -Nothing  less  will  contentjia. 

We 

earth  and  fire  and 

ence,  ancTobjects  of  veneration. 

He4s~argood  man  who  can  receive  a  gift  well. 
We  are  either  glad  or  sorry  at  a  gift,  and  both 
emotions  are  unbecoming.  Some  violence  I  think 
is  done,  some  degradation  borne,  when  I  rejoice  or 
grieve  at  a  gift.  I  am  sorry  when  my  independence 
is  invaded,  or  when  a  gift  comes  from  such  as  do 
not  know  my  spirit,  and  so  the  act  is  not  supported  ; 
and  if  the  gift  pleases  me  overmuch,  then  I  should 
be  ashamed  that  the  donor  should  read  my  heart, 
and  see  that  I  love  his  commodity,  and  not  him. 
The  gift,  to  be  true,  must  be  the  flowing  of  the' 
giver  unto  me,  correspondent  to  my  flowing  unto 


GIFTS.  157 

him.  When  the  waters  are  at  level,  then  my  goods 
pass  to  him,  and  his  to  me.  All  his  are  mine,  all 
mine  his.  I  say  to  him,  How  can  you  give  me  this 
pot  of  oil  or  this  flagon  of  wine  when  all  your  oil 
and  wine  is  mine,  which  belief  of  mine  this  gift 
seems  to  deny  ?  Hence  the  fitness  of  beautiful,  not 
useful  things,  for  gifts.  This  giving  is  flat  usurpa 
tion,  and  therefore  when  the  beneficiary  is  ungrate 
ful,  as  all  beneficiaries  hate  all  Timons,  not  at  all 
considering  the  value  of  the  gift  but  looking  back 
to  the  greater  store  it  was  taken  from,  —  I  rather 
sympathize  with  the  beneficiary  than  with  the  anger 
of  my  lord  Timon.  For  the  expectation  of  gratitude 
is  mean,  and  is  continually  punished  by  the  total  in 
sensibility  of  the  obliged  person.  It  is  a  great  hap 
piness  to  get  off  without  injury  and  heart-burning 
from  one  who  has  had  the  ill-luck  to  be  served  by 
you.  It  is  a  very  onerous  business,  this  of  being 
served,  and  the  debtor  naturally  wishes  to  give  you 
a  slap.  A  golden  text  for  these  gentlemen  is  thai 
which  I  so  admire  in  the  Buddhist,  who  never 
^thanks,  and  who  says,  "  Do  not  flat^eF"youFT)ene- 

Jactocs."  . 

The  reason  of  these  discords  I  conceive  to  be  that 
there  js_no  coinmensur  ability  betwegjiaman  and 
any  giffe-  —  YojLC^imjaiLgiYe.  anything  to  a  magnani- 
you  have  sprv-H  ]r'rn"hp  nt_ 


in  d^44-4*-  his 


158  GIFTS. 

service  a  man  renders  his  friend  is  trivial  and  self 
ish  compared  with  the  service  he  knows  his  friend 
stood  in  readiness  to  yield  him,  alike  before  he  had 
begun  to  serve  his  friend,  and  now  also.  Compared 
with  that  good-will  I  bear  my  friend,  the  benefit  it  is 
in  my  power  to  render  him  seems  small.  Besides, 
our  action  on  each  other,  good  as  well  as  evil,  is  so 
incidental  and  at  random  that  we  can  seldom  hear 
the  acknowledgments  of  any  person  who  would 
thank  us  for  a  benefit,  without  some  shame  and 
humiliation.  We  can  rarely  strike  a  direct  stroke, 
but  must  be  conteftt  with  an  oblique  one ;  we  sel 
dom  have  the  satisfaction  of  yielding  a  direct  bene 
fit  which  is  directly  received.  But  rectitude  scat 
ters  favors  on  every  side  without  knowing  it,  and 
receives  with  wonder  the  thanks  of  all  people. 

I  fear  to  breathe  any  treason  against  the  majesty 
of  love,  which  is  the  genius  and  god  of  gifts,  and  to 
whom  we  must  not  affect  to  prescribe.  Let  him 
give  kingdoms  or  flower-leaves  indifferently.  There 
are  persons  from  whom  we  always  expect  fairy- 
tokens  ;  let  us  not  cease  to  expect  them.  This  is 
prerogative,  and  not  to  be  limited  by  our  municipal 
rules.  For  the  rest,  I  like  to  see  that  we  cannot  be 
bought  and  sold.  The  best  of  hospitality  and  .of 
generosity  is  also  not  in  the  will,  but  in  fate.  I  find 
that  I  am  not  much  to  you ;  you  do  not  need  me ; 
you  do  not  feel  me  ;  then  am  I  thrust  out  of  doors, 


GIFTS.  159 

though  you  proffer  me  house  and  lands.  No  ser 
vices  are  of  any  value,  but  only  likeness.  When  I 
have  attempted  to  join  myself  to  others  by  services, 
it  proved  an  intellectual  trick,  —  110  more.  They 
eat  your  service  like  apples,  and  leave  you  out. 
But  love  them,  and  they  feel  you  and  delight  in 
you  all  the  time. 


NATURE. 


The  rounded  world  is  fair  to  see, 

Nine  times  folded  in  mystery : 

Though  baffled  seers  cannot  impart 

The  secret  of  its  laboring  heart, 

Throb  thine  with  Nature's  throbbing  breast. 

And  all  is  clear  from  east  to  west. 

Spirit  that  lurks  each  form  within 

Beckons  to  spirit  of  its  kin  ; 

Self-kindled  every  atom  glows, 

And  hints  the  future  which  it  owes. 


VL 

NATUEE. 


THERE  are  days  which  occur  in  this  climate,  at 
almost  any  season  of  the  year,  wherein  the  world 
reaches  its  perfection^  when  the  air,  the  heavenly 
bodies  and  the  earth,  make  a  harmony,  as  if  nature 
would  indulge  her  offspring ;  when,  in  these  bleak 
upper  sides  of  the  planet,  nothing  is  to  desire  that 
we  have  heard  of  the  happiest  latitudes,  and  we 
bask  in  the  shining  hours  of  Florida  and  Cuba ;} 
when  everything  that  has  life  gives  sign  of  satis 
faction,  and  the  cattle  that  lie  on  the  ground  seem 
to  have  great  and  tranquil  thoughts.  These  halcy 
ons  may  be  looked  for  with  a  little  more  assurance 
in  that  pure  October  weather  which  we  distinguish 
by  the  name  of  the  Indian  summer.  The  day,  im 
measurably  long,  sleeps  over  the  broad  hills  and 
warm  wide  fields.  To  have  lived  through  all  its 
sunny  hours,  seems  longevity  enough.  The  soli 
tary  places  do  not  seem  quite  lonely.  At  the  gates 
of  the  forest,  the  surprised  man  of  the  world  is 
forced  to  leave  his  city  estimates  of  great  and 


164  NATURE. 

small,  wise  and  foolish.  The  knapsack  of  custom 
falls  off  his  back  with  the  first  step  he  takes  into 
e  Precmcts-  ^Here.  is  sanctity  which  shames 
our  religions,  and  reality  which  discredits  our  he 
roes^  Here  we  find  Nature  to  be  the  circumstance 
which  dwarfs  every  other  circumstance,  and  judges 
1ilrp^j^PT>d-fl^l  men  that  come  to  her.  We  have 
crept  out  of  our  close  and  crowded  houses  into 
the  njght  and  morning,  and  we  see  what .  majes- 
tic  i^uJties  daily  wrap  us  in  their  bosom.  / 
willingly  we  would  escape  the  barriers  which  ren 
der  them  comparatively  impotent,  escape  the  so 
phistication  and  second  thought,  and  suffer  nature 
to  intrance  us.vtfThe  tempered  light  of  the  woods 
is  like  a  perpetual  morning,  and  is  stimulating  and 
heroic.  \  The  anciently  -  reported  spells  of  these 
places  creep  on  us.  The  stems  of  pines,  hemlocks, 
and  oaks  almost  gleam  like  iron  011  the  excited  eye. 
The  incommunicable  trees  begin  to  persuade  us  to 
live  with  them,  and  quit  our  life  of  solemn  trifles. 
Here  no  history,  or  church,  or  state,  is  interpolated 
on  the  divine  sky  and  the  immortal  year.  Plow 
easily  we  might  walk  onward  into  the  opening  land 
scape,  absorbed  by  new  pictures  and  by  thoughts 
fast  succeeding  each  other,  until  by  degrees  the  rec-^ 
ollection  of  home  was  crowded  out  of  the  mind,  all 
memory  obliterated  by  the  tyranny  of  the  present, 
and  we  were  led  in  triumph  by  nature. 


NATURE.  165 

These  enchantments  are  medicinal,  they  sober 
and  heal  us.  These  are  plain  pleasures,  kindly  and 
native  to  us.  We  come  to  our  own,  and  make 
friends  with  matter,  which  the  ambitious  chatter 
of  the  schools  would  persuade  us  to  despise.  We 
never  can  part  with  it ;  the  mind  loves  its  old  home : 
as  water  to  our  thirst,  so  is  the  rock,  the  ground,  to 
our  eyes  and  hands  and  feet.  It  is  firm  water  ;  it 
is  cold  flame  ;  what  health,  what  affinity !  Ever 
an  old  friend,  ever  like  a  dear  friend  and  brother 
when  we  chat  affectedly  with  strangers,  comes  in 
this  honest  face,  and  takes  a  grave  liberty  with  us, 
and  shames  us  out  of  our  nonsense.  Cities  give 
not  the  human  senses  room  enough.  We  go  out 
daily  and  nightly  to  feed  the  eyes  on  the  horizon, 
and  require  so  much  scope,  just  as  we  need  water 
for  our  bath.  There  are  all  degrees  of  natural  in 
fluence,  from  these  quarantine  powers  of  nature,  up 
to  her  dearest  and  gravest  ministrations  to  the  im 
agination  and  the  soul.  There  is  the  bucket  of 
cold  water  from  the  spring,  the  wood-fire  to  which 
the  chilled  traveller  rushes  for  safety,  —  and  there 
is  the  sublime  moral  of  autumn  and  of  noon.  We 
nestle  in  nature,  and  draw  our  living  as  parasites 
from  her  roots  and  grains,  and  we  receive  glances 
from  the  heavenly  bodies,  which  call  us  to  solitude 
and  foretell  the  remotest  future.  The  blue  zenith 
is  the  point  in  which  romance  and  reality  meet.  I 


166  NATURE. 

think  If  we  should  be  rapt  away  into  all  that  we 
dream  of  heaven,  and  should  converse  with  Gabriel 
and  Uriel,  the  upper  sky  would  be  all  that  would 
remain  of  our  furniture. 

It  seems  as  if  the  day  was  not  wholly  profane  in 
which  we  have  given  heed  to  some  natural  object. 
The  fall  of  snowflakes  in  a  still  air,  preserving  to 
each  crystal  its  perfect  form  ;  the  blowing  of  sleet 
over  a  wide  sheet  of  water,  and  over  plains ;  the 
waving  ryefield  ;  the  mimic  waving  of  acres  of 
houstonia,  whose  innumerable  florets  whiten  and 
ripple  before  the  eye  ;  the  reflections  of  trees  and 
flowers  in  glassy  lakes ;  the  musical  steaming  odor 
ous  south  wind,  which  converts  all  trees  to  wind- 
harps  ;  the  crackling  and  spurting  of  hemlock  in 
the  flames,  or  of  pine  logs,  which  yield  glory  to  the 
walls  and  faces  in  the  sittingroom,  —  these  are  the 
music  and  pictures  of  the  most  ancient  religion, 
My  house  stands  in  low  land,  with  limited  outlook, 
and  on  the  skirt  of  the  village.  But  I  go  with  my 
friend  to  the  shore  of  our  little  river,  and  with  one 
stroke  of  the  paddle  I  leave  the  village  politics  and 
personalities,  yes,  and  the  world  of  villages  and 
personalities,  behind,  and  pass  into  a  delicate^  realm 
of  sunset  and  moonlight,  too  bright  almost  for  spot 
ted  man  to  enter  without  novitiate  and  probation. 
We  penetrate  bodily  this  incredible  beauty ;  we 
dip  our  hands  in  this  painted  element;  our  eyes 


NATURE.  167 

are  bathed  in  these  lights  and  forms.  A  holi 
day,  a  villeggiatura,  a  royal  revel,  the  proudest, 
most  heart-rejoicing  festival  that  valor  and  beauty, 
power  and  taste,  ever  decked  and  enjoyed,  estab 
lishes  itself  on  the  instant.  These  sunset  clouds, 
these  delicately  emerging  stars,  with  their  private 
and  ineffable  glances,  signify  it  and  proffer  it.  I 
am  taught  the  poorness  of  our  invention,  the  ugli~ 
ness  of  towns  and  palaces.  Art  and  luxury  have 
.  early  learned  that  they  must  work  as  enhancement 
and  sequel  to  this  original  beauty.  I  am  overin- 
structed  for  my  return.  Henceforth  I  shall  be 
hard  to  please.  I  cannot  ^go  back  to  toys.  I  am 
growrn  expensive  and  sophisticated.  I  can  no 
longer  live  without  elegance,  but  a  countryman 
shall  be  my  master  of  revels.  He  who  knows  the 
most ;  he  who  knows  what  sweets  and  virtues  are 
in  the  ground,  the  waters,  the  plants,  the  heavens, 
and  how  to  come  at  these  enchantments,  —  is  the 
rich  and  royal  man.  Only  as  far  as  the  masters  of 
the  world  have  called  in  nature  to  their  aid,  can 
they  reach  the  height  of  magnificence.  This  is  the 
meaning  of  their  hanging-gardens,  villas,  garden- 
houses,  islands,  parks  and  preserves,  to  back  their 
faulty  personality  with  these  strong  accessories.  I 
do  not  wonder  that  the  landed  interest  should  be 
invincible  in  the  State  with  these  dangerous  auxil 
iaries.  These  bribe  and  invite ;  not  kings,  not  pal- 


168  NATURE. 

aces,  not  men,  not  women,  but  these  tender  and 
poetic  stars,  eloquent  of  secret  promises.  We  heard 
what  the  rich  man  said,  we  knew  of  his  villa,  his 
grove,  his  wine  and  his  company,  but  the  provoca 
tion  and  point  of  the  invitation  came  out  of  these 
beguiling  stars.  In  their  soft  glances  I  see  what 
men  strove  to  realize  in  some  Versailles,  or  JPaphos, 
or  Ctesiphoii.  Indeed,  it  is  the  magical  lights  of 
the  horizon  and  the  blue  sky  for  the  background 
which  save  all  our  works  of  art,  which  were  other 
wise  bawbles.  When  the  rich  tax  the  poor  with  ser 
vility  and  obsequiousness,  they  should  consider  the 
effect  of  men  reputed  to  be  the  possessors  of  nature, 
on  imaginative  minds.  Ah !  if  the  rich  were  rich 
as  the  poor  fancy  riches  !  A  boy  hears  a  military 
band  play  on  the  field  at  night,  and  he  has  kings 
and  queens  and  famous  chivalry  palpably  before 
him.  He  hears  the  echoes  of  a  horn  in  a  hill  coun 
try,  in  the  Notch  Mountains,  for  example,  which 
converts  the  mountains  into  an  ^Eolian  harp,  — 
and  this  supernatural  tiralira  restores  to  him  the 
Dorian  mythology,  Apollo,  Diana,  and  all  divine 
hunters  and  huntresses.  Can  a  musical  note  be  so 
lofty,  so  haughtily  beautiful !  To  the  poor  young 
poet,  thus  fabulous  is  his  picture  of  society ;  he  is 
loyal ;  he  respects  the  rich  ;  they  are  rich  for  the* 
sake  of  his  imagination  ;  how  poor  his  fancy  would 
be,  if  they  were  not  rich  I  That  they  have  some 


NATURE.  169 

high-fenced  grove  which  they  call  a  park ;  that 
they  live  in  larger  and  better-garnished  saloons 
than  he  has  visited,  and  go  in  coaches,  keeping  only 
the  society  of  the  elegant,  to  watering-places  and  to 
distant  cities,  —  these  make  the  groundwork  from 
which  he  has  delineated  estates  of  romance,  com 
pared  with  which  their  actual  possessions  are  shan 
ties  and  paddocks.  The  muse  herself  betrays  her 
son,  and  enhances  the  gifts  of  wealth  and  well-born 
beauty  by  a  radiation  out  of  the  air,  and  clouds, 
and  forests  that  skirt  the  road,  —  a  certain  haughty 
favor,  as  if  from  patrician  genii  to  patricians,  a 
kind  of  aristocracy  in  nature,  a  prince  of  the  power 
of  the  air. 

The  moral  sensibility  which  makes  Edens  and 
Tempes  so  easily,  may  not  be  always  found,  but  the 
material  landscape  is  never  far  off.  We  can  find 
these  enchantments  without  visiting  the  Como  Lake, 
or  the  Madeira  Islands.  We  exaggerate  the  praises 
of  local  scenery.  In  every  landscape  the  point  of 
astonishment  is  the  meeting  of  the  sky  and  the 
earth,  and  that  is  seen  from  the  first  hillock 
as  well  as  from  the  top  of  the  Alleghanies.  The 
stars  at  night  stoop  down  over  the  brownest,  home 
liest  common  with  all  the  spiritual  magnificence 
which  they  shed  on  the  Campagna,  or  on  the  mar 
ble  deserts  of  Egypt.  The  uprolled  clouds  and  the 
colors  of  morning  and  evening  will  transfigure 


170  NATURE. 

maples  and  alders.  The  difference  between  land 
scape  and  landscape  is  small,  but  there  is  great 
difference  in  the  beholders.  There  is  nothing  so 
wonderful  in  any  particular  landscape  as  the  neces 
sity  of  being  beautiful  under  which  every  landscape 
lies.  Nature  cannot  be  surprised  in  undress.  Beau 
ty  breaks  in  everywhere. 

But  it  is  very  easy  to  outrun  the  sympathy  of 
readers  on  this  topic,  which  schoolmen  called  natura 
naturata,  or  nature  passive.  One  can  hardly  speak 
directly  of  it  without  excess.  It  is  as  easy  to  broach 
in  mixed  companies  what  is  called  "  the  subject  of 
religion."  A  susceptible  person  does  not  like  to  in 
dulge  his  tastes  in  this  kind  without  the  apology  of 
some  trivial  necessity :  he  goes  to  see  a  wood-lot,  or 
to  look  at  the  crops,  or  to  fetch  a  plant  or  a  mineral 
from  a  remote  locality,  or  he  carries  a  fowling-piece 
or  a  fishing-rod.  I  suppose  this  shame  must  have 
a  good  reason.  A  dilettantism  in  nature  is  barren 
and  unworthy.  The  fop  of  fields  is  no  better  than 
his  brother  of  Broadway.  Men  are  naturally  hunt 
ers  and  inquisitive  of  wood-craft,  and  I  suppose 
that  such  a  gazetteer  as  wood-cutters  and  Indians 
should  furnish  facts  for,  would  take  place  in  the 
most  sumptuous  drawing-rooms  of  all  the  "Wreaths" 
and  "  Flora's  chaplets  "  of  the  bookshops ;  yet  or-* 
dinarily,  whether  we  are  too  clumsy  for  so  subtle  a 
topic,  or  from  whatever  cause,  as  soon  as  men  beghi 


NATURE.  171 

to  write  on  nature,  they  fall  into  euphuism.  Fri 
volity  is  a  most  unfit  tribute  to  Pan,  who  ought  to 
be  represented  in  the  mythology  as  the  most  con 
tinent  of  gods.  I  would  not  be  frivolous  before 
the  admirable  reserve  and  prudence  of  time,  yet  I 
cannot  renounce  the  right  of  returning  often  to  this 
old  topic.  The  multitude  of  false  churches  accred-"") 
its  the  true  religion.  Literature,  poetry,  science  are 
the  homage  of  man  to  this  unfathomed  secret,  con 
cerning  which  no  sane  man  can  affect  an  indiffer 
ence  or  incuriosity.  Nature  is  loved  by  what  is 
best  in  us.  It  is  loved  as  the  city  of  God,  although, 
or  rather  because  there  is  no  citizen.  The  sunset 
is  unlike  anything  that  is  underneath  it :  it  wants 
men.  And  the  beauty  of  nature  must  always  seem 
unreal  and  mocking,  until  the  landscape  has  human 
figures  that  are  as  good  as  itself.  If  there  were 
good  men,  there  woidd  never  be  this  rapture  in  na 
ture.  If  the  king  is  in  the  palace,  nobody  looks  at 
the  walls.  It  is  when  he  is  gone,  and  the  house  is 
filled  with  grooms  and  gazers,  that  we  turn  from 
the  people  to  find  relief  in  the  majestic  men  that 
are  suggested  by  the  pictures  and  the  architecture. 
The  critics  who  complain  of  the  sickly  separation 
of  the  beauty  of  nature  from  the  thing  to  be  done, 
must  consider  that  our  hunting  of  the  picturesque 
is  inseparable  from  our  protest  against  false  society. 
Man  is  fallen  £  nature  is  erect,  and  serves  as  a 


172  NATURE. 

differential  thermometer,  detecting  the  presence  or 
absence  of  the  divine  sentiment  in  man.  By  fault 
of  our  dulness  and  selfishness  we  are  looking  up  to 
nature,  but  when  we  are  convalescent,  nature  wi 
look  up  to  us.  We  see  the  foaming  brook  with 
compunction  :  if  our  own  life  flowed  with  the  right  / 
energy,  we  should  shame  the  brook.  The  stream  of 
zeal  sparkles  with  real  fire,  and  not  with  reflex 
rays  of  sun  and  moon.  Nature  may  be  as  selfishly 
studied  as  trade.  Astronomy  to  the  selfish  becomes 
astrology ;  psychology,  mesmerism  (with  intent  to 
show  where  our  spoons  are  gone);  and  anatomy 
and  physiology  become  phrenology  and  palmistry. 

But  taking  timely  warning,  and  leaving  many 
things  unsaid  on  this  topic,  let  us  not  longer  omit 
our  homage  to  the  Efficient  Nature,  natura  natu- 
rans,  the  quick  cause  before  which  all  forms  flee  as 
the  driven  snows;  itself  secret,  its  works  driven 
before  it  in  flocks  and  multitudes,  (as  the  ancients 
represented  nature  by  Proteus,  a  shepherd,)  and  in 
undescribable  variety.  It  publishes  itself  in  crea 
tures,  reaching  from  particles  and  spiculaB  through 
transformation  on  transformation  to  the  highest 
symmetries,  arriving  at  consummate  results  without 
a  shock  or  a  leap.  A  little  heat,  that  is  a  little  mo 
tion,  is  all  that  differences  the  bald,  dazzling  white  I 
and  deadly  cold  poles  of  the  earth  from  the  prolific 
tropical  climates.  All  changes  pass  without  vio* 


NATURE.  17  $ 

lence,  by  reason  of  the  two  cardinal  conditions  of 
boundless  space  and  boundless  time.  Geology  has 
initiated  us  into  the  secularity  of  nature,  and  taught 
us  to  disuse  our  dame-school  measures,  and  exchange 
our  Mosaic  and  Ptolemaic  schemes  for  her  large 
style.  We  knew  nothing  rightly,  for  want  of  per 
spective.  Now  we  learn  what  patient  periods  must 
round  themselves  before  the  rock  is  formed;  then 
before  the  rock  is  broken,  and  the  first  lichen  race 
has  disintegrated  the  thinnest  external  plate  into 
soil,  and  opened  the  door  for  the  remote  Flora, 
Fauna,  Ceres,  and  Pomona  to  come  in.  How  far 
off  yet  is  the  trilobite !  how  far  the  quadruped ! 
how  inconceivably  remote  is  man !  All  duly  arrive, 
and  then  race  after  race  of  men.  It  is  a  long  way 
from  granite  to  the  oyster ;  farther  yet  to  Plato  and 
the  preaching  of  the  immortality  of  the  soul.  Yet 
all  must  come,  as  surely  as  the  first  atom  has  two 
sides. 

Motion  or  change  and  identity  or  rest  are  the 
first  and  second  secrets  of  nature  :  —  Motion  and 
Rest.  The  whole  code  of  her  laws  may  be  written 
on  the  thumbnail,  or  the  signet  of  a  ring.  The 
whirling  bubble  on  the  surface  of  a  brook  admits 
us  to  the  secret  of  the  mechanics  of  the  sky.  Every 
shell  on  the  beach  is  a  key  to  it.  A  little  water 
made  to  rotate  in  a  cup  explains  the  formation  of 
the  simpler  shells ;  the  addition  of  matter  from 


174  NATURE. 

year  to  year  arrives  at  last  at  the  most  complex 
forms ;  and  yet  so  poor  is  nature  with  all  her  craft, 
that  from  the  beginning  to  the  end  of  the  universe 
she  has  but  one  stuff,  —  but  one  stuff  with  its  two 
ends,  to  serve  up  all  her  dream-like  variety.  Com 
pound  it  how  she  will,  star,  sand,  fire,  water,  tree, 
man,  it  is  still  one  stuff,  and  betrays  the  same  prop 
erties. 

Nature  is  always  consistent,  though  she  feigns 
to  contravene  her  own  laws.  She  keeps  her  laws, 
and  seems  to  transcend  them.  She  arms  and  equips 
an  animal  to  find  its  place  and  living  in  the  earth, 
and  at  the  same  time  she  arms  and  equips  another 
animal  to  destroy  it.  Space  exists  to  divide  crea 
tures  ;  but  by  clothing  the  sides  of  a  bird  with  a  few 
feathers  she  gives  him  a  petty  omnipresence.  The 
direction  is  forever  onward,  but  the  artist  still  goes 
back  for  materials  and  begins  again  with  the  first 
elements  on  the  most  advanced  stage  :  otherwise  all 
goes  to  ruin.  If  we  look  at  her  work,  we  seem  to 
catch  a  glance  of  a  system  in  transition.  Plants  are 
the  young  of  the  world,  vessels  of  health  and  vigor ; 
but  they  grope  ever  upward  towards  consciousness ; 
the  trees  are  imperfect  men,  and  seem  to  bemoan 
their  imprisonment,  rooted  in  the  ground.  The 
animal  is  the  novice  and  probationer  of  a  more 
advanced  order.  The  men,  though  young,  having 
tasted  the  first  drop  from  the  cup  of  thought,  are 


NATURE.  175 

already  dissipated :  the  maples  and  ferns  are  still 
imcorrupt ;  yet  no  doubt  when  they  come  to  con 
sciousness  they  too  will  curse  and  swear.  Flowers 
so  strictly  belong  to  youth  that  we  adult  men  soon 
come  to  feel  that  their  beautiful  generations  con 
cern  not  us :  we  have  had  our  day ;  now  let  the 
children  have  theirs.  The  flowers  jilt  us,  and  we 
are  old  bachelors  with  our  ridiculous  tenderness. 

Things  are  so  strictly  related,  that  according  to 
the  skill  of  the  eye,  from  any  one  object  the  parts 
and  properties  of  any  other  may  be  predicted.  If 
we  had  eyes  to  see  it,  a  bit  of  stone  from  the  city 
wall  would  certify  us  of  the  necessity  that  man 
must  exist,  as  readily  as  the  city.  That  identity 
makes  us  all  one,  and  reduces  to  nothing  great  .in 
tervals  on  our  customary  scale.  We  talk  of  devia 
tions  from  natural  life,  as  if  artificial  life  were  not 
also  natural.  The  smoothest  curled  courtier  in  the 
boudoirs  of  a  palace  has  an  animal  nature,  rude 
and  aboriginal  as  a  white  bear,  omnipotent  to  -  its 
own  ends,  and  is  directly  related,  there  amid,  es 
sences  and  billetsdoux,  to^-ffiiEtmaieli^H'fttmnfitin- 
chaiiTS-aatLthe  axis  of  the  globe.  If  we  consider 
how  much  we  are  nature's,  we  need  not  be  supersti 
tious  about  towns,  as  if  that  terrific  or  benefic  rorce 
did  not  find  us  there  also,  and  fashion  cities.  £{a- 
ture,  who  made  the  mason,  made  the  house.  ^Ye 
may  easily  hear  too  much  of  rural  influences.  The 


176  NATURE. 

cool  disengaged  air  of  natural  objects  makes  them 
enviable  to  us,  chafed  and  irritable  creatures  with 
red  faces,  and  we  think  we  shall  be  as  grand  as 
they  if  we  camp  out  and  eat  roots ;  but  let  us  be 
men  instead  of  woodchucks  and  the  oak  and  the 
elm  shall  gladly  serve  us,  though  we  sit  in  chairs 
of  ivory  on  carpets  of  silk. 

This  guiding  identity  runs  through  all  the  sur 
prises  and  contrasts  of  the  piece,  and  characterizes 
every  law.  Man  carries  the  world  in  his  head,  the 
whole  astronomy  and  chemistry  suspended  in  a 
thought.  Because  the  history  of  nature  is  charac 
tered  in  his  brain,  therefore  is  he  the  prophet  and 
'discoverer  of  her  secrets.  Every  known  fact  in 
natural  science  was  divined  by  the  presentiment  of 
somebody,  before  it  was  actually  verified.  A  man 
does  not  tie  his  shoe  without  recognizing  laws  which 
bind  the  farthest  regions  of  nature  :  moon,  plant, 
gas,  crystal,*  are  concrete  geometry  and  numbers0 
Common  sense  knows  its  own,  and  recognizes  the 
fact  at  first  sight  in  chemical  experiment.  The 
common  sense  of  Franklin,  Dalton,  Davy  and 
Black,  is  the  same  common  sense  which  made  the 
arrangements  which  now  it  discovers. 

If  the  identity  expresses  organized  rest,  the  coun 
ter  action  runs  also  into  organization.  The  astron 
omers  said,  '  Give  us  matter  and  a  little  motion  and 
we  will  construct  the  universe.  It  is  not  enough 


NATURE.  177 

that  we  should  have  matter,  we  must  also  have 
a  single  impulse,  one  shove  to  launch  the  mass  and 
generate  the  harmony  of  the  centrifugal  and  centrip 
etal  forces.  Once  heave  the  ball  from  the  hand, 
and  we  can  show  how  all  this  mighty  order  grew.' 
— '  A  very  unreasonable  postulate, '  said  the  meta 
physicians,  'and  a  plain  begging  of  the  question. 
Could  you  not  prevail  to  know  the  genesis  of  pro 
jection,  as  well  as  the  continuation  of  it  ? '  Nature, 
meanwhile,  had  not  waited  for  the  discussion,  but, 
right  or  wrong,  bestowed  the  impulse,  and  the  balls 
rolled.'  It  was  no  great  affair;  a  mere  push,  but  the 
astronomers  were  right  in  making  much  of  it,  for 
there  is  no  end  to  the  consequences  of  the  act.  That 
famous  aboriginal  push  propagates  itself  through 
all  the  balls  of  the  system,  and  through  every  atom 
of  every  ball ;  through  all  the  races  of  creatures, 
and  through  the  history  and  performances  of  every 
individual.  Exaggeration  is  in  the  course  of  things. 
Nature  sends  no  creature,  no  man  into  the  world 
without  adding  a  small  excess  of  his  proper  quality. 
Given  the  planet,  it  is  still  necessary  to  add  the 
impulse  ;  so  to  every  creature  nature  added  a  little 
violence  of  direction  in  its  proper  path,  a  shove  to 
put  it  on  its  way ;  in  every  instance  a  slight  gen- 
erosit}^,  a  drop  too  much.  Without  electricity  the 
air  would  rot,  and  without  this  violence  of  direc 
tion  which  men  and  women  have,  without  a  spice  of 

VOL.    III.  12 


178  NATURE.  i 

bigot  and  fanatic,  no  excitement,  no  efficiency.  "We 
aim  above  the  mark  to  hit  the  mark.  Every  act 
hath  some  falsehood  of  exaggeration  in  it.  And 
when  now  and  then  comes  along  some  sad,  sharp- 
eyed  man,  who  sees  how  paltry  a  game  is  played, 
and  refuses  to  play  but  blabs  the  secret ;  —  how 
then?  Is  the  bird  flown?  O  no,  the  wary  Na 
ture  sends  a  new  troop  of  fairer  forms,  of  lordlier 
youths,  with  a  little  more  excess  of  direction  to  hold 
them  fast  to  their  several  aim  ;  makes  them  a  little 
wrong-headed  in  that  direction  in  which  they  are 
rightest,  and  on  goes  the  game  again  with  new  whirl, 
for  a  generation  or  two  more.  The  child  with  his 
sweet  pranks,  the  fool  of  his  senses,  commanded  by 
every  sight  and  sound,  without  any  power  to  com 
pare  and  rank  his  sensations,  abandoned  to  a  whistle 
or  a  painted  chip,  to  a  lead  dragoon  or  a  ginger 
bread-dog,  individualizing  everything,  generalizing 
nothing,  delighted  with  every  new  thing,  lies  down 
at  night  overpowered  by  the  fatigue  which  this  day 
of  continual  pretty  madness  has  incurred.  But  Na 
ture  has  answered  her  purpose  with  the  curly,  dim 
pled  lunatic.  She  ha*s  tasked  every  faculty,  and  has 
secured  the  symmetrical  growth  of  the  bodily  frame 
by  all  these  attitudes  an,d  exertions,  —  an  end  of  the 
first  importance,  which  could  not  be  trusted  to  any 
care  less  perfect  than  l>er  own.  This  glitter,  this 
opaline  lustre  plays  round  the  top  of  every  toy  to 


NATURE.  179 

his  eye  to  insure  his  fidelity,  and  he  is  deceived  to 
his  good.  We  are  made  alive  and  kept  alive  by 
the  same  arts.  Let  the  stoics  say  what  they  please, 
we  do  not  eat  for  the  good  of  living,  but  because 
the  meat  is  savory  and  the  appetite  is  keen.  The 
vegetable  life  does  not  content  itself  with  casting 
from  the  flower  or  the  tree  a  single  seed,  but  it  fills 
the  air  and  earth  with  a  prodigality  of  seeds,  that, 
if  thousands  perish,  thousands  may  plant  them 
selves  ;  that  hundreds  may  come  up,  that  tens  may 
live  to  maturity  ;  that  at  least  one  may  replace  the 
parent.  All  things  betray  the  same  calculated  pro 
fusion.  The  excess  of  fear  with  which  the  animal 
frame  is  hedged  round,  shrinking  from  cold,  start 
ing  at  sight  of  a  snake  or  at  a  sudden  noise,  pro 
tects  us,  through  a  multitude  of  groundless  alarms, 
from  some  one  real  danger. at  last.  The  lover  seeks 
in  marriage  his  private  felicity  and  perfection,  with 
no  prospective  end ;  and  nature  hides  in  his  happi 
ness  her  own  end,  namely  progeny,  or  the  perpe 
tuity  of  the  race. 

But  the  craft  with  which  the  world  is  made,  runs 
also  into  the  mind  and  character  of  men.  No  man 
is  quite  sane ;  each  has  a  vein  of  folly  in  his  com 
position,  a  slight  determination  of  blood  to  the  head, 
to. make  sure  of  holding  him  hard  to  some  one  point 
which  nature  had  taken  to  heart.  Great  causes  are 
never  tried  on  their  merits  ;  but  the  cause  is  re- 


180  NATURE. 

duced  to  particulars  to  suit  the  size  of  the  partisans, 
and  the  contention  is  ever  hottest  on  minor  matters. 
Not  less  remarkable  is  the  overfaith  of  each  man  in 
the  importance  of  what  he  has  to  do  or  say.  The 
poet,  the  prophet,  has  a  higher  value  for  what  he 
utters  than  any  hearer,  and  therefore  it  gets  spoken. 
The  strong,  self-complacent  Luther  declares  with 
an  emphasis  not  to  be  mistaken,  that  "  God  him 
self  cannot  do  without  wise  men."  Jacob  Behmen 
and  George  Fox  betray  their  egotism  in  the  perti 
nacity  of  their  controversial  tracts,  and  James  Nay- 
lor  once  suffered  himself  to  be  worshipped  as  the 
Christ.  Each  prophet  comes  presently  to  identify 
himself  with  his  thought,  and  to  esteem  his  hat  and 
shoes  sacred.  However  this  may  discredit  such  per 
sons  with  the  judicious,  it  helps  them  with  the  peo 
ple,  as  it  gives  heat,  pungency,  and  publicity  to 
their  words.  A  similar  experience  is  not  infrequent 
in  private  life.  Each  young  and  ardent  person 
writes  a  diary,  in  which,  when  the  hours  of  prayer 
and  penitence  arrive,  he  inscribes  his  soul.  The 
pages  thus  written  are  to  him  burning  and  fragrant ; 
he  reads  them  on  his  knees  by  midnight  and  by  the 
morning  star ;  he  wets  them  with  his  tears ;  they 
are  sacred ;  too  good  for  the  world,  and  hardly  yet  „ 
to  be  shown  to  the  dearest  friend.  £}iis  is  the  man-  * 
chilt^  that  is  born  to  the  soul,  and  her' life  still  cir 
culates  in  the  babe.  The  umbilical  cord  has  not  yet 


NATURE.  181 

been  cut.  After  some  time  has  elapsed,  he  begins 
to  wish  to  admit  his  friend  to  this  hallowed  experi 
ence,  and  with  hesitation,  yet  with  firmness,  exposes 
the  pages  to  his  eye.  Will  they  not  burn  his  eyes  ? 
The  friend  coldly  turns  them  over,  and  passes  from 
the  writing  to  conversation,  with  easy  transition, 
which  strikes  the  other  party  with  astonishment  and 
vexation.  He  cannot  suspect  the  writing  itself. 
Days  and  nights  of  fervid  life,  of  communion  with 
angels  of  darkness  and  of  light  have  engraved  their 
shadowy  characters  on  that  tear-stained  book.  He 
suspects  the  intelligence  or  the  heart  of  his  friend. 
Is  there  then  no  friend  ?  He  cannot  yet  credit  that 
one  may  have  impressive  experience  and  yet  may 
not  know  how  to  put  his  private  fact  into  literature : 
and  perhaps  the  discovery  that  wisdom  has  other 
tongues  and  ministers  than  'we,  that  though  we 
should  hold  our  peace  the  truth  would  not  the  less 
be  spoken,  might  check  injuriously  the  flames  of  our 
zeal.  A  man  can  only  speak  so  long  as  he  does 
not  feel  his  speech  to  be  partial  and  inadequate. 
It  is  partial,  but  he  does  not  see  it  to  be  so  whilst 
he  utters  it.  As  soon  as  he  is  released  from  the 
instinctive  and  particular  and  sees  its  partiality,  he 
shuts  his  mouth  in  disgust.  For  no  man  can  write 
anything  who  does  not  think  that  what  he  writes  is 
for  the  time  the  history  of  the  world ;  or  do  any 
thing  well  who  does  not  esteem  his  work  to  be  of 


182  NATURE. 

importance.  (My  work  may  be  of  none,  but  I  must 
not  think  it  of  none,  or  I  shall  not  do  it  with  im 
punity/ 

In  like  manner,  there  is  throughout  nature  some 
thing  mocking,  something  that  leads  us  on  and  on, 
but  arrives  nowhere ;  keeps  no  faith  with  us.  All 
promise  outruns  the  performance.  We  live  in  a 
system  of  approximations.  Every  end  is  prospec 
tive  of  some  other  end,  which  is  also  temporary ; 
a  round  and  final  success  nowhere.  We  are  en 
camped  in  nature,  not  domesticated.  Hunger  and 
thirst  lead  us  on  to  eat  and  to  drink ;  but  bread  and 
wine,  mix  and  cook  them  how  you  will,  leave  us 
hungry  and  thirsty,  after  the  stomach  is  full.  It  is 
the  same  with  all  our  arts  and  performances.  Our 
music,  our  poetry,  our  language  itself  are  not  satis 
factions,  but  suggestions.  The  hunger  for  wealth, 
which  reduces  the  planet  to  a  garden,  fools  the 
eager  pursuer.  What  is  the  end  sought?  Plainly 
to  secure  the  ends  of  good  %i^~aprl,Jbeauty  from 
the  intrusion  of  deformity  or  vulgarity  of  any  kind,* 
But  what  an  operose  method !  What  a  train  of 
means  to  secure  a  little  conversation  !  This  palace 
of  brick  and  stone,  these  servants,  this  kitchen, 
these  stables,  horses  and  equipage,  this  bank-stock 
and  file  of  mortgages ;  trade  to  all  the  world,  coun 
try-house  and  cottage  by  the  waterside,  all  for  a 
little  conversation,  high,  clear,  and  spiritual !  Could 


NATURE.  183 

it  not  be  had  as  well  by  beggars  on  the  high 
way?  No,  all  these  things  came  from  successive 
efforts  of  these  beggars  to  remove  friction  from  the 
wheels  of  life,  and  give  opportunity.  Conversa 
tion,  character,  were  the  avowed  ends ;  wealth  was 
good  as  it  appeased  the  animal  cravings,  cured  the 
smoky  chimney,  silenced  the  creaking  door,  brought 
friends  together  in  a  warm  and  quiet  room,  and 
kept  the  children  and  the  dinner-table  in  a  differ 
ent  apartment.  Thought,  virtue,  beauty,  were  the 
ends ;  but  it  was  known  that  men  of  thought  and 
virtue  sometimes  had  the  headache,  or  wet  feet,  or 
could  lose  good  time  whilst  the  room  was  getting 
warm  in  winter  days.  Unluckily,  in  the  exertions 
necessary  to  remove  these  inconveniences,  the  main 
attention  has  been  diverted  to  this  object;  the 
old  aims  have  been  lost  sight  of,  and  to  remove 
friction  has  come  to  be  the  end.  That  is  the  ridi 
cule  of  rich  men  ;  and  Boston,  London,  Vienna,  and 
now  the  governments  generally  of  the  world  are 
cities  and  governments  of  the  rich  ;  and  the  masses 
are  not  men,  but  poor  men,  that  is,  men  who  would 
be  rich  ;  this  is  the  ridicule  of  the  class,  that  they 
arrive  with  pains  and  sweat  and  fury  nowhere ; 
when  all  is  done,  it  is  for  nothing.  They  are  like 
one  who  has  interrupted  the  conversation  of  a 
company  to  make  his  speech,  and  now  has  forgot 
ten  what  he  went  to  say.  The  appearance  strikes 


184  NATURE. 

the  eye  everywhere  of  an  aimless  society,  of  aim 
less  nations.  Were  the  ends  of  nature  so  great 
and  cogent  as  to  exact  this  immense  sacrifice  of 
men? 

Quite  analogous  to  the  deceits  in  life,  there  is, 
as  might  be  expected,  a  similar  effect  on  the  eye 
from  the  face  of  external  nature.  There  is  in 
woods  and  waters  a  certain  enticement  and  flat 
tery,  together  with  a  failure  to  yield  a  present  sat 
isfaction.  This  disappointment  is  felt  in  every 
landscape.  I  have  seen  the  softness  and  beauty 
of  the  summer  clouds  floating  feathery  overhead, 
enjoying,  as  it  seemed,  their  height  and  privilege 
of  motion,  whilst  yet  they  appeared  not  so  much 
the  drapery  of  this  place  and  hour,  as  forelooking 
to  some  pavilions  and  gardens  of  festivity  beyond. 
It  is  an  odd  jealousy,  but  the  poet  finds  himself 
not  near  enough  to  his  object.  The  pine-tree,  the 
river,  the  bank  of  flowers  before  him  does  not  seem 
to  be  nature.  Nature  is  still  elsewhere.  This  or 
this  is  but  outskirt  and  far-off  reflection  and  echo 
of  the  triumph  that  has  passed  by  and  is  now  at 
its  glancing  splendor  and  heyday,  perchance  in  the 
neighboring  fields,  or,  if  you  stand  in  the  field, 
then  in  the  adjacent  woods.  ]  The  present  object 
shall  give  you  this  sense  of  stillness  that  follows  a 
pageant  which  has  just  gone  by.  What  splendid 
distance,  what  recesses  of  ineffable  pomp  and  love- 


NATURE.  185 

liness  in  the  sunset !  But  who  can  go  where  they 
are,  or  lay  his  hand  or  plant  his  foot  thereon? 
Off  they  fall  from  the  round  world  forever  and 
ever.  It  is  the  same  among  the  men  and  women 
as  among  the  silent  trees  ;  always  a  referred  exist 
ence,  an  absence,  never  a  presence  and  satisfac 
tion.  (^  Is  it  that  beauty  can  never  be  grasped  ?  Jin 
persons  and  in  landscape  is  equally  inaccessible? 

?he  accepted  and  betrothed  lover  has  lost  the  wild- 
it  charm  of  his  maiden  in  her  acceptance  of  him. 
he  was  heaven  whilst  he  pursued  her  as  a  star : 
le  cannot  be  heaven  if  she  stoops  to  such  a  one 
>  he. 

What  shall  we  say  of  this  omnipresent  appear 
ance  of  that  first  projectile  impulse,  of  this  flattery 
and  balking  of  so  many  well-meaning  creatures? 
Must  we  not  suppose  somewhere  in  the  universe  a 
slight  treachery  and  derision?  Are  we  not  en 
gaged  to  a  serious  resentment  of  this  use  that  is 
made  of  us  ?  Are  we  tickled  trout,  and  fools  of 
nature  ?  One  look  at  the  face  of  heaven  and  earth 
lays  all  petulance  at  rest,  and  soothes  us  to  wiser 
convictions.  To  the  intelligent,  nature  converts  it 
self  into  a  vast  promise,  and  will  not  be  rashly  ex 
plained.  Her  secret  is  untold.  Many  and  many 
an  CEdipus  arrives ;  he  has  the  whole  mystery  teem 
ing  in  his  brain.  Alas !  the  same  sorcery  has  spoiled 
his  skill;  no  syllable  can  he  shape  on  his  lips.  Her 


186  NATURE. 

mighty  orbit  vaults  like  the  fresh  rainbow  into  the 
deep,  but  no  archangel's  wing  was  yet  strong  enough 
to  follow  it  and  report  of  the  return  of  the  curve. 
But  it  also  appears  that  our  actions  are  seconded  and 
disposed  to  greater  conclusions  than  we  designed. 
We  are  escorted  on  every  hand  through  life  by  spir 
itual  agents,  and  a  beneficent  purpose  lies  in  wait 
for  us.  We  cannot  bandy  words  with  Nature,  or 
deal  with  her  as  we  deal  with  persons.  If  we  meas 
ure  our  individual  forces  against  hers  we  may  easily 
feel  as  if  we  were  the  sport  of  an  insuperable  des 
tiny.  But  if,  instead  of  identifying  ourselves  with 
the  work,  we  feel  that  the  soul  of  the  workman 
streams  through  us,  we  shall  find  the  peace  of  the 
morning  dwelling  first  in  our  hearts,  and  the  fath 
omless  powers  of  gravity  and  chemistry,  and,  over 
them,  of  life,  preexisting  within  us  in  their  highest 
form. 

The  uneasiness  which  the  thought  of  our  help 
lessness  in  the  chain  of  causes  occasions  us,  results 
from  looking  too  much  at  one  condition  of  nature, 
namely,  Motion.  But  the  drag  is  never  taken  from 
the  wheel.  Wherever  the  impulse  exceeds,  the  Rest 
or  Identity  insinuates  its  compensation.  All  over 
the  wide  fields  of  earth  grows  the  prunella  or  self- 
heal.  After  every  foolish  day  we  sleep  off  the 
fumes  and  furies  of  its  hours;  and  though  we  are 
always  engaged  with  particulars,  and  often  enslaved 


NATURE.  187 

to  them,  we  bring  with  us  to  every  experiment  the 
innate  universal  laws.  These,  while  they  exist  in 
the  mind  as  ideas,  stand  around  us  in  nature  for 
ever  embodied,  a  present  sanity  to  expose  and  cure 
the  insanity  of  men.  Our  servitude  to  particu 
lars  betrays  us  into  a  hundred  foolish  expectations. 
We  anticipate  a  new  era  from  the  invention  of  a 
locomotive,  or  a  balloon;  the  new  engine  brings 
with  it  the  old  checks.  They  say  that  by  electro- 
magnetism  your  salad  shall  be  grown  from  the  seed 
whilst  your  fowl  is  roasting  for  dinner ;  it  is  a  sym 
bol  of  our  modern  aims  and  endeavors,  of.  our  con 
densation  and  acceleration  of  objects  ;  —  but  noth 
ing  is  gained ;  nature  cannot  be  cheated ;  man's  life 
is  but  seventy  salads  long,  grow  they  swift  or  grow 
they  slow.  In  these  checks  and  impossibilities  how 
ever  we  find  our  advantage,  not  less  than  in  the  im 
pulses.  Let  the  victory  fall  where  it  will,  we  are 
on  that  side.  And  the  knowledge  that  we  traverse 
the  whole  scale  of  being,  from  the  centre  to  the 
poles  of  nature,  and  have  some  stake  in  every  possi 
bility,  lends  that  sublime  lustre  to  death,  which 
philosophy  and  religion  have  too  outwardly  and  lit 
erally  striven  to  express  in  the  popular  doctrine  of 
the  immortality  of  the  soul.  The  reality  is  more 
excellent  than  the  report.  Here  is  no  ruin,  no  dis 
continuity,  no  spent  ball.  The  divine  circulations 
never  rest  nor  linger.  Nature  is  the  incarnation  of 


188  NATURE. 

a  thought,  and  turns  to  a  thought  again,  as  ice  be 
comes  water  and  gas.  t  The  world  is  mind  precipi 
tated,  and  the  volatile  essence  is  forever  escaping 
again  into  the  state  of  free  thought.  Hence  the  vir 
tue  and  pungency  of  the  influence  on  the  mind 
of  natural  objects,  whether  inorganic  or  organized. 
Man  imprisoned,  man  crystallized,  man  vegetative, 
speaks  to  man  impersonated.  That  power  which 
does  not  respect  quantity,  which  makes  the  whole 
and  the  particle  its  equal  channel,  delegates  its  smile 
to  the  morning,  and  distils  its  essence  into  every 
drop  of  rain.  Every  moment  instructs,  and  every 
object ;  for  wisdom  is  infused  into  every  form.  It 
has  been  poured  into  us  as  blood ;  it  convulsed  us 
as  pain ;  it  slid  into  us  as  pleasure  ;  it  enveloped  us 
in  dull,  melancholy  days,  or  in  days  of  cheerful  la 
bor  ;  we  did  not  guess  its  essence  until  after  a  long 
time. 


POLITICS. 


Gold  and  iron  are  good 

To  buy  iron  and  gold ; 

All  earth's  fleece  and  food 

For  their  like  are  sold. 

Boded  Merlin  wise, 

Proved  Napoleon  great,  — 

Nor  kind  nor  coinage  buys 

Aught  above  its  rate. 

Fear,  Craft,  and  Avarice 

Cannot  rear  a  State. 

Out  of  dust  to  build 

What  is  more  than  dust,  — 

Walls  Amphion  piled 

Phoebus  stabh'sh  must. 

When  the  Muses  nine 

With  the  Virtues  meet, 

Find  to  their  design 

An  Atlantic  seat, 

By  green  orchard  boughs 

Fended  from  the  heat, 

Where  the  statesman  ploughs 

Furrow  for  the  wheat ; 

When  the  Church  is  social  worth, 

When  the  state-house  is  the  hearth, 

Then  the  perfect  State  is  come, 

The  republican  at  home. 


VII. 
POLITICS. 


IN  dealing  with  the  State  we  ought  to  remember 
that  its  institutions  are  not  aboriginal,  though  they 
existed  before  we  were  born  ;  that  they  are  not  su 
perior  to  the  citizen ;  that  every  one  of  them  was 
once  the  act  of  a  single  man ;  every  law  and  usage 
was  a  man's  expedient  to  meet  a  particular  case ; 
that  they  all  are  imitable,  all  alterable ;  we  may 
make  as  good,  we  may  make  better.  Society  is  an 
illusion  to  the  young  citizen.  It  lies  before  him  in 
rigid  repose,  with  certain  names,  men  and  institu 
tions  rooted  like  oak-trees  to  the  centre,  round 
which  all  arrange  themselves  the  best  they  can. 
But  the  old  statesman  knows  that  society  is  fluid  ; 
there  are  no  such  roots  and  centres,  but  any  parti 
cle  may  suddenly  become  the  centre  of  the  move 
ment  and  compel  the  system  to  gyrate  round  it ;  as 
every  man  of  strong  will,  like  Pisistratus  or  Crom 
well,  does  for  a  time,  and  every  man  of  truth,  like 
Plato  or  Paul,  does  forever.  But  politics  rest  on 
necessary  foundations,  and  cannot  be  treated  with 


1 92  POLITICS. 

levity.  Republics  abound  in  young  civilians  who 
believe  that  the  laws  make  the  city,  that  grave 
modifications  of  the  policy  and  modes  of  living  and 
employments  of  the  population,  that  commerce,  ed 
ucation,  and  religion,  may  be  voted  in  or  out ;  and 
that  any  measure,  though  it  were  absurd,  may  be 
imposed  on  a  people  if  only  you  can  get  sufficient 
voices  to  make  it  a  law.  But  the  wise  know  that 
foolish  legislation  is  a  rope  of  sand  which  perishes 
in  the  twisting ;  that  the  State  must  follow  and 
not  lead  the  character  and  progress  of  the  citizen  ; 
the  strongest  usurper  is  quickly  got  rid  of ;  and 
they  only  who  build  on  Ideas,  build  for  eternity ; 
and  that  the  form  of  government  which  prevails  is 
\  the  expression  of  what  cultivation  exists  in  the  pop 
ulation  which  permits  it.  The  law  is  only  a  mem 
orandum.  We  are  superstitious,  and  esteem  the 
statute  somewhat:  so  much  life  as  it  has  in  the 
character  of  living  men  is  its  force.  The  statute 
stands  there  to  say,  Yesterday  we  agreed  so  and  so, 
but  how  feel  ye  this  article  to-day?  Our  statute 
is  a  currency  which  we  stamp  with  our  own  por 
trait  :  it  soon  becomes  unrecognizable,  and  in  pro 
cess  of  time  will  return  to  the  mint.  Nature  is  not 
democratic,  nor  limited-monarchical,  but  despotic, 
and  will  not  be  fooled  or  abated  of  any  jot  of  her 
authority  by  the  pertest  of  her  sons  ;  and  as  fast  as 
the  public  mind  is  opened  to  more  intelligence,  the 


POLITICS.  193 

code  is  seen  to  be  brute  and  stammering.  It  speaks 
not  articulately,  and  must  be  made  to.  Meantime 
the  education  of  the  general  mind  never  stops. 
The  reveries  of  the  true  and  simple  are  prophetic. 
What  the  tender  poetic  youth  dreams,  and  prays, 
and  paints  to-day,  but  shuns  the  ridicule  of  saying 
aloud,  shall  presently  be  the  resolutions  of  public 
bodies ;  then  shall  be  carried  as  grievance  and  bill 
of  rights  through  conflict  and  war,  and  then  shall 
be  triumphant  law  and  establishment  for  a  hun 
dred  years,  until  it  gives  place  in  turn  to  new  pray 
ers  and  pictures.  The  history  of  the  State  sketches 
in  coarse  outline  the  progress  of  thought,  and  fol 
lows  at  a  distance  the  delicacy  of  culture  and  of  as 
piration. 

The  theory  of  politics  which  has  possessed  the 
mind  of  men,  and  which  they  have  expressed  the 
best  they  could  in  their  laws  and  in  their  revolu 
tions,  considers  persons  and  property  as  the  two  ob 
jects  for  whose  protection  government  exists.  Of 
persons,  all  have  equal  rights,  in  virtue  of  being 
identical  in  nature.  This  interest  of  course  with 
its  whole  power  demands  a  democracy.  Whilst  the 
rights  of  all  as  persons  are  equal,  in  virtue  of  their 
access  to  reason,  their  rights  in  property  are  very 
unequal.  One  man  owns  his  clothes,  and  another 
owns  a  county.  This  accident,  depending  primari 
ly  on  the  skill  and  virtue  of  the  parties,  of  which 

VOL.    III.  13 


194  POLITICS. 

there  is  every  degree,  and  secondarily  on  patrimo 
ny,  falls  unequally,  and  its  rights  of  course  are 
unequal.  Personal  rights,  universally  the  same, 
demand  a  government  f rained  on  the  ratio  of  the 
census  ;  property  demands  a  government  framed 
on  the  ratio  of  owners  and  of  owning.  Laban,  who 
has  flocks  and  herds,  wishes  them  looked  after  by 
an  officer  on  the  frontiers,  lest  the  Midianites  shall 
drive  them  off ;  and  pays  a  tax  to  that  end.  Jacob 
has  no  flocks  or  herds  and  no  fear  of  the  Midian 
ites,  and  pays  no  tax  to  the  officer.  It  seemed  fit 
that  Laban  and  Jacob  should  have  equal  rights  to 
elect  the  officer  who  is  to  defend  their  persons,  but 
that  Laban  and  not  Jacob  should  elect  the  officer 
who  is  to  guard  the  sheep  and  cattle.  And  if  ques 
tion  arise  whether  additional  officers  or  watch-tow 
ers  should  be  provided,  must  not  Laban  and  Isaac, 
and  those  who  must  sell  part  of  their  herds  to  buy 
protection  for  the  rest,  judge  better  of  this,  and  with 
more  right,  than  Jacob,  who,  because  he  is  a  youth 
and  a  traveller,  eats  their  bread  and  not  his  own  ? 

In  the  earliest  society  the  proprietors  made  their 
own  wealth,  and  so  long  as  it  comes  to  the  owners 
in  the  direct  way,  no  other  opinion  would  arise  in 
any  equitable  community  than  that  property  should 
make  the  law  for  property,  and  persons  the  law  for 
persons. 

But  property  passes  through  donation  or  inherit- 


POLITICS.  195 

ance  to  those  who  do  not  create  it.  Gift,  in  one 
case,  makes  it  as  really  the  new  owner's,  as  labor 
made  it  the  first  owner's :  in  the  other  case,  of  pat- 
.rimony,  the  law  makes  an  ownership  which  will  be 
valid  in  each  man's  view  according  to  the  estimate 
which  he  sets  on  the  public  tranquillity. 

It  was  not  howeygr  found  easy  to  embody  the 
readily  admitted  principle  that  property  should 
make  law  for  property,  and  persons  for  persons ; 
since  persons  and  property  mixed  themselves  in 
every  transaction.  At  last  it  seemed  settled  that 
the  rightful  distinction  was  that  the  proprietors 
should  have  more  elective  franchise  than  non-pro 
prietors,  on  the  Spartan  principle  of  "  calling  that 
which  is  just,  equal ;  not  that  which  is  equal,  just." 

"^hat  principle  no  longer  looks  so  self-evident  as 
it  appeared  in  former  times,  partly  because  doubts 
have  arisen  whether  too  much  weight  had  not  been 
allowed  in  the  laws  to  property,  and  such  a  struc 
ture  given  to  our  usages  as  allowed  the  rich  to  en 
croach  on  the  poor,  and  to  keep  them  poor ;  but 
mainly  because  there  is  an  instinctive  sense,  how 
ever  obscure  and  yet  inarticulate,  that  the  whole 
constitution  of  property,  on  its  present  tenures,  is 
injurious,  and  its  influence  on  persons  deteriorating 
and  degrading  ;  that  truly  the  only  interest  for  the 
consideration  of  the  State  is  persons  ;  that  property 
will  always  follow  persons  ;  that  the  highest  end  of 


196  POLITICS. 

government  is  the  culture  of  men  ;  and  that  if  men 
can  be  educated,  the  institutions  will  share  their 
improvement  and  the  moral  sentiment  will  write 
the  law  of  the  land. 

If  it  be  not  easy  to  settle  the  equity  of  this  ques 
tion,  the  peril  is  less  when  we  take  note  of  our  nat 
ural  defences.  We  are  kept  by  better  guards  than 
the  vigilance  of  such  magistrates  as  we  commonly 
elect.  Society  always  consists  in  greatest  part  of 
young  and  foolish  persons.  The  old,  ^  who  have 
seen  through  the  hypocrisy  of  courts  and  statesmen, 
die  and  leave  no  wisdom  to  their  sons.  They  be 
lieve  their  own  newspaper,  as  their  fathers  did  at 
their  age.  With  such  an  ignorant  and  deceivable 
majority,  States  would  soon  run  to  ruin,  but  that 
there  are  limitations  beyond  which  the  folly  and 
ambition  of  governors  cannot  go.  Things  have  their 
laws,  as  well  as  men  ;  and  things  refuse  to  be  trifled 
with.  Property  will  be  protected.  Corn  will  not 
grow  unless  it  is  planted  and  manured ;  but  the 
farmer  will  not  plant  or  hoe  it  unless  the  chances 
are  a  hundred  to  one  that  he  will  cut  and  harvest 
it.  Under  any  forms,  persons  and  property  must 
and  will  have  their  just  sway.  They  exert  their 
power,  as  steadily  as  matter  its  attraction.  Cover 
up  a  pound  of  earth  never  so  cunningly,  divide  and 
subdivide  it ;  melt  it  to  liquid,  convert  it  to  gas  ;  it 
will  always  weigh  a  pound;  it  will  always  attract 


POLITICS.  197 

and  resist  other  matter  by  the  full  virtue  of  one 
pound  weight :  —  and  the  attributes  of  a  person,  his 
wit  and  his  moral  energy,  will  exercise,  under  any 
law  or  extinguishing  tyranny,  their  proper  force, 
—  if  not  overtly,  then  covertly  ;  if  not  for  the  law, 
then  against  it ;  if  not  wholesomely,  then  poison- 
ously ;  with  right,  or  by  might. 

The  boundaries  of  personal  influence  it  is  impos 
sible  to  fix,  as  persons  are  organs  of  moral  or  super 
natural  force.  Under  the  dominion  of  an  idea 
which  possesses  the  minds  of  multitudes,  as  civil 
freedom,  or  the  religious  sentiment,  the  powers  of 
persons  are  no  longer  subjects  of  calculation.  A 
nation  of  men  unanimously  bent  011  freedom  or  con 
quest  can  easily  confound  the  arithmetic  of  statists, 
and  achieve  extravagant  actions,  out  of  all  propor 
tion  to  their  means  ;  as  the  Greeks,  the  Saracens, 
the  Swiss,  the  Americans,  and  the  French  have 
done. 

In  like  manner  to  every  particle  of  property  be 
longs  its  own  attraction.  A  cent  is  the  representa 
tive  of  a  certain  quantity  of  corn  or  other  commod 
ity.  Its  value  is  in  the  necessities  of  the  animal 
man.  It  is  so  much  warmth,  so  much  bread,  so 
much  water,  so  much  land.  The  law  may  do  what 
it  will  with  the  owner  of  property ;  its  just  power 
will  still  attach  to  the  cent.  The  law  may  in  a 
macl  freak  say  that  all  shall  have  power  except  the 


198  POLITICS. 

owners  of  property ;  they  shall  have  no  vote. 
Nevertheless,  by  a  higher  law,  the  property  will, 
year  after  year,  write  every  statute  that  respects 
property.  The  non-proprietor  will  be  the  scribe 
of  the  proprietor.  What  the  owners  wish  to  do, 
the  whole  power  of  property  will  do,  either  through 
the  law  or  else  in  defiance  of  it.  Of  course  I  speak 
of  all  the  property,  not  merely  of  the  great  estates. 
When  the  rich  are  outvoted,  as  frequently  happens, 
it  is  the  joint  treasury  of  the  poor  which  exceeds 
their  accumulations.  Every  man  owns  something, 
if  it  is  only  a  cow,  or  a  wheel-barrow,  or  his  arms, 
and  so  has  that  property  to  dispose  of. 

The  same  necessity  which  secures  the  rights  of 
person  and  property  against  the  malignity  or  folly 
of  the  magistrate,  determines  the  form  and  meth 
ods  of  governing,  which  are  proper  to  each  nation 
and  to  its  habit  of  thought,  and  nowise  transferable 
to  other  states  of  society.  In  this  country  we  are 
very  vain  of  our  political  institutions,  which  are 
singular  in  this,  that  they  sprung,  within  the  mem 
ory  of  living  men,  from  the  character  and  condition 
of  the  people,  which  they  still  express  with  suffi 
cient  fidelity,  —  and  we  ostentatiously  prefer  them 
to  any  other  in  history.  They  are  not  better,  but 
only  fitter  for  us.  We  may  be  wise  in  asserting 
the  advantage  in  modern  times  of  the  democratic 
form,  but  to  other  states  of  society,  in  which  relig- 


POLITICS.  199 

ion  consecrated  the  monarchical,  that  and  not  this 
was  expedient.  Democracy  is  better  for  us,  be 
cause  the  religious  sentiment  of  the  present  time 
accords  better  with  it.  Born  democrats,  we  are  110- 
wise  qualified  to  judge  of  monarchy,  which,  to  our 
fathers  living  in  the  monarchical  idea,  was  also  rel 
atively  right.  But  our  institutions,  though  in  coin 
cidence  with  the  spirit  of  the  age,  have  not  any 
exemption  from  the  practical  defects  which  have 
discredited  other  forms.  Every  actual  State,  i* 
corrupt.  Good  men  must  not  obey  the  laws  too 
well.  What  satire  on  government  can  equal  the 
severity  of  censure  conveyed  in  the  word  politic, 
which  now  for  ages  has  signified  cunning,  intimat 
ing  that  the  State  is  a  trick  ? 

The  same  benign  necessity  and  the  same  practi 
cal  abuse  appear  in  the  parties,  into  which  each 
State  divides  itself,  of  opponents  and  defenders  of 
the  administration  of  the  government.  Parties  are, 
also  founded  on  instincts,  and  have  better  guides  to 
their  own  humble  aims,,  tbari^the  sagacity  of  their 
leaders.  They  have  nothing  perverse  in  their  ori 
gin,  but  rudely  mark  some  real  and  lasting  relation. 
We  might  as  wisely  reprove  the  east  wind  or  the 
frost,  as  a  political  party,  whose  members,  for  the 
most  part,  could  give  no  account  of  their  position, 
but  stand  for  the  defence  of  those  interests  in 
which  they  find  themselves.  Our  quarrel  with 


200  POLITICS. 

them  begins  when  they  quit  this  deep  natural 
ground  at  the  bidding  of  some  leader,  and  obeying 
personal  considerations,  throw  themselves  into  the 
maintenance  and  defence  of  points  nowise  belong 
ing  to  their  system.  A  party  is '  perpetually  cor 
rupted  by  personality.  Whilst  we  absolve  the  as 
sociation  from  dishonesty,  we  cannot  extend  the 
same  charity  to  their  leaders.  They  reap  the  re 
wards  of  the  docility  and  zeal  of  the  masses  which 
they  direct.  Ordinarily  our  parties  are  parties  of 
circumstance,  and  not  of  principle ;  as  the  planting 
interest  in  conflict  with  the  commercial ;  the  party 
of  capitalists  and  that  of  operatives :  parties  which 
are  identical  in  their  moral  character,  and  which 
can  easily  change  ground  with  each  other  in  the 
support  of  many  of  their  measures.  Parties  of 
principle,  as,  religious  sects,  or  the  party  of  free- 
trade,  of  universal  suffrage,  of  abolition  of  slavery, 
of  abolition  of  capital  punishment,  —  degenerate 
into  personalities,  or  would  inspire  enthusiasm. 
The  vice  of  our  leading  parties  in  this  country 
(which  may  be  cited  as  a  fair  specimen  of  these  so 
cieties  of  opinion)  is  that  they  do  not  plant  them 
selves  on  the  deep  and  necessary  grounds  to  which 
they  are  respectively  entitled,  but  lash  themselves 
to  fury  in  the  carrying  of  some  local  and  momen 
tary  measure,  nowise  useful  to  the  commonwealth. 
Of  the  two  great  parties  which  at  this  hour  almost 


POLITICS.  201 

sliare  the  nation  between  them,  I  should  say  that  \ 
one  has  the  best  cause,  and  the  other  contains  the  \ 
best  men.  The  philosopher,  the  poet,  or  the  relig 
ious  man,  will  of  course  wish  to  cast  his  vote  with 
the  democrat,  for  free-trade,  for  wide  suffrage,  for 
the  abolition  of  legal  cruelties  in  the  penal  code, 
and  for  facilitating  in  every  manner  the  access  of 
the  young  and  the  poor  to  the  sources  of  wealth 
and  power.  But  he  can  rarely  accept  the  persons 
whom  the  so-called  popular  party  propose  to  him 
as  representatives  of  these  liberalities.  They  have 
not  at  heart  the  ends  which  give  to  the  name  of 
democracy  what  hope  and  virtue  are  in  it.  The 
spirit  ofour  American  radicalism  is  destructive 
and  aimless :  it  is  not  loving ;  it  has  no  ulterior  and 
divine  ends,  but  is  destructive  only  out  of  hatred 
and  selfishness.  On  the  other  side,  the  conserva 
tive  party,  composed  of  ttie  most  moderate,  able, 
and  cultivated  part  of  the  population,  is  timid,  and 
merely  defensive  of  property.  It  vindicates  no 
right,  it  aspires  to  no  real  good,  it  brands  no  crime, 
it  proposes  no  generous  policy ;  it  does  not  build, 
nor  write,  nor  cherish  the  arts,  nor  foster  religion, 
nor  establish  schools,  nor  encourage  science,  nor 
emancipate  the  slave,  nor  befriend  the  poor,  or  the 
Indian,  or  the  immigrant.  From  neither  party, 
when  in  power,  has  the  world  any  benefit  to  expect 
in  science,  art,  or  humanity,  at  all  commensurate 
with  the  resources  of  the  nation. 


202  POLITICS. 

I  do  not  for  these  defects  despair  of  our  republic. 
We  are  not  at  the  mercy  of  any  waves  of  chance. 
In  the  strife  of  ferocious  parties,  human  nature  al 
ways  finds  itself  cherished ;  as  the  children  of  the 
convicts  at  Botany  Bay  are  found  to  have  as  healthy 
a  moral  sentiment  as  other  children.  Citizens  of 
feudal  states  are  alarmed  at  our  democratic  institu 
tions  lapsing  into  anarchy,  and  the  older  and  more 
cautious  among  ourselves  are  learning  from  Euro 
peans  to  look  with  some  terror  at  our  turbulent 
freedom.  It  is  said  that  in  our  license  of  constru 
ing  the  Constitution,  and  in  the  despotism  of  pub 
lic  opinion,  we  have  no  anchor;  and  one  foreign 
observer  thinks  he  has  found  the  safeguard  in  the 
sanctity  of  Marriage  among  us  ;  and  another  thinks 
he  has  found  it  in  our  Calvinism.  Fisher  Ames 
expressed  the  popular  security  more  wisely,  when 
he  compared  a  monarchy  and  a  republic,  saying 
that  a  monarchy  is  a  merchantman,  which  sails  well, 
but  will  sometimes  strike  011  a  rock  and  go  to  the 
bottom  ;  whilst  a  republic  is  a  raft,  which  would 
never  sink,  but  then  your  feet  are  always  in  water. 
No  forms  can  have  any  dangerous  importance  whilst 
we  are  befriended  by  the  laws  of  things.  It  makes 
no  difference  how  many  tons  weight  of  atmosphere 
presses  on  our  heads,  so  long  as  the  same  pressure 
resists  it  within  the  lungs.  Augment  the  mass  a 
thousand  fold,  it  cannot  begin  to  crush  us,  as  long 


POLITICS.  203 

as  reaction  is  equal  to  action.  The  fact  of  two 
poles,  of  two  forces,  centripetal  and  centrifugal,  is 
universal,  and  each  force  by  its  own  activity  devel 
ops  the  other.  Wild  liberty  develops  iron  con 
science.  Want  of  liberty,  by  strengthening  law 
and  decorum,  stupefies  conscience.  'Lynch-law' 
prevails  only  where  there  is  greater  hardihood  and 
self-subsistency  in  the  leaders.  A  mob  cannot  be 
a  permanency;  everybody's  interest  requires  that 
it  should  not  exist,  and  only  justice  satisfies  all. 

We  must  trust  infinitely  to  the  beneficent  neces 
sity  which  shines  through  all  laws.  Human  nature 
expresses  itself  in  them  as  characteristically  as  in 
statues, or  songs,  or  railroads:  and  an  abstract  of 
the  codes  of  nations  would  be  a  transcript  of  the 
common  conscience.  Governments  have  their  ori 
gin  in  the  moral  identity  of  men.  Reason  for  one 
is  seen  to  be  reason  for  another/  and  for  every  other. 
There  is  a  middle  measure  which  satisfies  all  par 
ties,  be  they  tfever  so  many  or  so  resolute  for  their 
own.  Every  man  finds  a  sanction  for  his  simplest 
claims  and  deeds,  in  decisions  of  his  own  mind, 
which  he  calls  Truth  and  Holiness.  In  these  de 
cisions  all  the  citizens  find  a  perfect  agreement,  and 
only  in  these ;  not  in  what  is  good  to  eat,  good  to 
wear,  good  use  of  time,  or  what  amount  of  land  or 
of  public  aid  each  is  entitled  to  claim.  This  truth 
and  justice  men  presently  endeavor  to  make  appli- 


204  POLITICS. 

cation  of  to  the  measuring  of  land,  the  apportion 
ment  of  service,  the  protection  of  life  and  property. 
Their  first  endeavors,  no  doubt,  are  very  awkward. 
Yet  absolute  right  is  the  first  governor ;  or,  every 
government  is  an  impure  theoc'racy.  The  idea 
after  which  each  community  is  aiming  to  make  and 
mend  its  law,  is  the  will  of  the  wise  man.  The 
wise  man  it  cannot  find  in  nature,  and  it  makes  awk 
ward  but  earnest  efforts  to  secure  his  government 
by  contrivance ;  as  by  causing  the  entire  people  to 
give  their  voices  on  every  measure ;  or  by  a  double 
choice  to  get  the  representation  of  the  whole  ;  or 
by  a  selection  of  the  best  citizens  ;  or  to  secure  the 
advantages  of  efficiency  and  internal  peace  by  con 
fiding  the  government  to  one,  who  may  himself 
select  his  agents.  All  forms  of  government  sym 
bolize  an  immortal  government,  common  to  all  dy 
nasties  and  independent  of  numbers,  perfect  where 
two  men  exist,  perfect  where  there  is  only  one 
man. 

Every  man's  nature  is  a  sufficient  advertisement; 
to  him  of  the  character  of  his  fellows.  My  right 
and  my  wrong  is  their  right  and  their  wrong. 
Whilst  I  do  what  is  fit  for  me,  and  abstain  from 
what  is  unfit,  my  neighbor  and  I  shall  often  agree 
in  our  means,  and  work  together  for  a  time  to  on& 
end.  But  whenever  I  find  my  dominion  over  my* 
self  not  sufficient  for  me,  and  undertake  the  direo- 


^POLITICS.  205 


tion  of  him  also,  I  overstep  the  truth,  and  come 
into  false  relations  to  him.  I  may  have  so  much 
more  skill  or  strength  than  he  that  he  cannot  ex 
press  adequately  his  sense  of  wrong,  but  it  is  a  lie, 
and  hurts  like  a  lie  both  him  and  me.  Love  and 
nature  cannot  maintain  the  assumption  ;  it  must  be 
executed  by  a  practical  lie,  namely  by  force.  This 
undertaking  for  another  is  the  blunder  which  stands 
in  colossal  ugliness  in  the  governments  of  the  world. 
It  is  the  same  thing  in  numbers,  as  in  a  pair,  only 
not  quite  so  intelligible.  I  can  see  well  enough  a 
great  difference  between  my  setting  myself  down  to 
a  self-control,  and  my  going  to  make  somebody  else 
act  after  niy  views;  but  when  a  quarter  of  the 
human  race  assume  to  tell  me  what  I  must  do,  I 
may  be  too  much  disturbed  by  the  circumstances 
to  see  so  clearly  the  absurdity  of  their  command. 
Therefore  all  public  ends  look  vague  and  quixotic 
beside  private  ones.  For  any  laws  but  those  which 
men  make  for  themselves,  are  laughable.  If  I  put 
myself  in  the  place  of  my  child,  and  we  stand  in 
one  thought  and  see  that  things  are  thus  or  thus, 
that  perception  is  law  for  him  and  me.  We  are 
both  there,  both  act.  But  if,  without  carrying  him 
into  the  thought,  I  look  over  into  his  plot,  and,  guess 
ing  how  it  is  with  him,  ordain  this  or  that,  he  will 
never  obey  me.  This  is  the  history  of  governments, 
•  —  one  man  does  something  which  is  to  bind  an- 


206  POLITICS. 

other.  A  man  who  cannot  be  acquainted  with  me, 
taxes  me ;  looking  from  afar  at  me  ordains  that  a 
part  of  my  labor  sh#ll  go  to  this  or  that  whimsical 
end, — not  as  I,  "but!  as  he  happens  to  fancy.  Be 
hold  the  consequencta.  QjLall  debts  men  are  least 
willing  to  pay  the  taxes.  What  a  satire  is  this  on 
government !  Everywhere  they  think  they  get 
their  money's  worth,  except  for  these. 

Hence  the  less  government  we  have  the  better, 
—  the  fewer  laws,  and  the  less  confided  power. 
The  antidote  to  this  abuse  of  formal  Government 
is  the  influence  of  private  character,  the  growth  of 
the  Individual ;  the  appearance  of  the  principal  to 
supersede  the  proxy ;  the  appearance  of  the  wise 
man ;  of  whom  the  existing  government  is,  it  must 
be  owned,  but  a  shabby  imitation.  That  which  all 
things  tend  to  educe ;  which  freedom,  cultivation, 
intercourse,  revolutions,  go  to  form  and  deliver,  is 
character  ;  that  is  the  end  of  Nature,  to  reach  unto 
this  coronation  of  her  king.  To  educate  the  wise 
man  the  State  exists,  and  with  the  appearance  of 
the  wise  man  the  State  expires.  The  appearance 
of  character  makes  the  State  unnecessary.  The 
wise  man  is  the  State.  'He  needs  no  army,  fort,  or 
navy,  —  he  loves  men  too  well ;  no  bribe,  or  feast, 
or  palace,  to  draw  friends  to  him ;  no  vantage 
ground,  no  favorable  circumstance.  He  needs  no 
library,  for  he  has  not  done  thinking ;  no  church, 


POLITICS.  207 

for  he  is  a  prophet ;  no  statute  book,  for  he  has  the 
lawgiver;  no  money,  for  he  is  value  ;yno  road,  for 
he  is  at  home  where  he  is ;  no  experience,  for  the 
life  of  the  creator  shoots  through  him,  and7  looks 
from  his  eyes.  He  has  no  personal  friends,  for  he 
who  has  the  spell  to  draw  the  prayer  and  piety  of 
all  men  unto  him  needs  not  husband  and  educate 
a  few  to  share  with  him  a  select  and  poetic  life. 
His  relation  to  men  is  angelic  ;  his  memory  is 
myrrh  to  them ;  his  presence,  frankincense  and 
flowers. 

We  think  our  civilization  near  its  meridian,  but 
we  are  yet  only  at  the  cock-crowing  and  the  morn 
ing  star.  In  our  barbarous  society  the  influence  of 
character  is  in  its  infancy.  As  a  political  power,  as 
the  rightful  lord  who  is  to  tumble  all  rulers  from 
their  chairs,  its  presence  is  hardly  yet  suspected. 
Malthus  and  Ricardo  quite  omit  it ;  the  Annual 
Register  is  silent ;  in  the  Conversations'  Lexicon 
it  is  not  set  down ;  the  President's  Message,  the 
Queen's  Speech,  have  not  mentioned  it;  and  yet 
it  is  never  nothing.  Every  thought  which  genius 
and  piety  throw  into  the  world,  alters  the  world. 
The  gladiators  in  the  lists  of  power  feel,  through 
all  their  frocks  of  force  and  simulation,  the  pres 
ence  of  worth.  I  think  the  very  strife  of  trade  and 
ambition  is  confession  of  this  divinity;  and  suc 
cesses  in  thoso  fields  are  the  poor  amends,  the  fig- 


208  POLITICS. 

leaf  with  which  the  shamed  soul  attempts  to  hide 
its  nakedness.  I  find  the  like  unwilling  homage  in 
all  quarters.  It  is  because  we  know  how  much  is 
due  from  us  that  we  are  impatient  to  show  some 
petty  talent  as  a  substitute  for  worth.  We  are 
haunted  by  a  conscience  of  this  right  to  grandeur 
of  character,  and  are  false  to  it.  But  each  of  us 
has  some  talent,  can  do  somewhat  useful,  or  grace 
ful,  or  formidable,  or  amusing,  or  lucrative.  That 
we  do,  as  an  apology  to  others  and  to  ourselves  for 
not  reaching  the  mark  of  a  good  and  equal  life. 
But  it  does  not  satisfy  ws,  whilst  we  thrust  it  on 
the  notice  of  our  companions.  It  may  throw  dust 
in  their  eyes,  but  does  not  smooth  our  own  brow, 
or  give  us  the  tranquillity  of  the  strong  when  we 
walk  abroad.  We  do  penance  as  we  go.  Our  tal 
ent  is  a  sort  of  expiation,  and  we  are  constrained 
to  reflect  on  our  splendid  moment  with  a  certain 
humiliation,  as  somewhat  too  fine,  and  not  as  one 
act  of  many  acts,  a  fair  expression  of  our  perma 
nent  energy.  Most  persons  of  ability  meet  in  so 
ciety  with  a  kind  of  tacit  appeal.  Each  seems  to 
say,  '  I  am  not  all  here.'  Senators -and  presidents 
have  climbed  so  high  with  pain  enough,  not  be 
cause  they  think  the  place  specially  agreeable,  but 
as  an  apology  for  real  worth,  and  to  vindicate  their 
manhood  in  our  eyes.  This  conspicuous  chair  is 
their  compensation  to  themselves  for  being  of  a 


POLITICS.  209 

poor,  cold,  hard  nature.  They  must  do  what  they 
can.  Like  one  class  of  forest  animals,  they  have 
nothing  but  a  prehensile  tail ;  climb  they  must,  or 
crawl.  If  a  man  found  himself  so  rich-natured 
that  he  could  enter  into  strict  relations  with  the 
best  persons  and  make  life  serene  around  him  by 
the  dignity  and  sweetness  of  his  behavior,  could  he 
afford  to  circumvent  the  favor  of  the  caucus  and 
the  press,  and  covet  relations  so  hollow  and  pom 
pons  as  those  of  a  politician  ?  Surely  nobody  would 
be  a  charlatan  who  could  afford  to  be  sincere. 

The  tendencies  of  the  times  favor  the  idea  of  self- 
government,  and  leave  the  individual,  for  all  code, 
to  the  rewards  and  penalties  of  his  own  constitu 
tion  ;  which  work  with  more  energy  than  we  be 
lieve  whilst  we  depend  on  artificial  restraints.  The 
movement  in  this  direction  has  been  very  marked 
in  modern  history.  Much  has  been  blind  and  dis 
creditable,  but  the  nature  of  the  revolution  is  not 
affected  by  the  vices  of  the  revolters;  for  this  is 
a  purely  moral  force.  It  was  never  adopted  by 
any  party  in  history,  neither  can  be.  It  separates 
the  individual  from  all  party,  and  unites  him  at  the 
same  time  to  the  race.  It  promises  a  recognition 
of  higher  rights  than  those  of  personal  freedom,  or 
the  security  of  property.  A  man  has  a  right  to  be 
employed,  to  be  trusted,  to  be  loved,  to  be  revered. 
The  power  of  love,  as  the  basis  of  a  State,  has  never 

VOL.  III.  14 


210  POLITICS. 

been  tried.  We  must  not  imagine  that  all  things 
are  lapsing  into  confusion  if  every  tender  protest- 
ant  be  not  compelled  to  bear  his  part  in  certain 
social  conventions ;  nor  doubt  that  roads  can  be 
built,  letters  carried,  and  the  fruit  of  labor  secured, 
when  the  government  of  force  is  at  an  end.  Are 
our  methods  now  so  excellent  that  all  competition  is 
hopeless  ?  could  not  a  nation  of  friends  even  devise 
better  ways  ?  On  the  other  hand,  let  not  the  most 
conservative  and  timid  fear  anything  from  a  pre 
mature  surrender  of  the  bayonet  and  the  system  of 
force.  For,  according  to  the  order  of  nature,  which 
is  quite  superior  to  our  will,  it  stands  thus  ;  there 
will  always  be  a  government  of  force  where  men 
are  selfish  ;  and  when  they  are  pure  enough  to  ab 
jure  the  code  of  force  they  will  be  wise  enough  to 
see  how  these  public  ends  of  the  post-office,  of  the 
highway,  of  commerce  and  the  exchange  of  prop 
erty,  of  museums  and  libraries,  of  institutions  of 
art  and  science  can  be  answered. 

We  live  in  a  very  low  state  of  the  world,  and 
pay  unwilling  tribute  to  governments  founded  on 
force.  There  is  not,  among  the  most  religious  and 
instructed  men  of  the  most  religious  and  civil  na 
tions,  a  reliance  on  the  moral  sentiment  and  a  suf 
ficient  belief  in  the  unity  of  things,  to  persuade 
them  that  society  can  be  maintained  without  artifi 
cial  restraints,  as  well  as  the  solar  system ;  or  that 


POLITICS.  211 

the  private  citizen  might  be  reasonable  and  a  good 
neighbor,  without  the  hint  of  a  jail  or  a  confiscation. 
What  is  strange  too,  there  never  was  in  any  man 
sufficient  faith  in  the  power  of  rectitude  to  inspire 
him  with  the  broad  design  of  renovating  the  State 
on  the  principle  of  right  and  love.  All  those  who 
have  pretended  this  design  have  been  partial  re 
formers,  and  have  admitted  in  some  manner  the 
supremacy  of  the  bad  State.  I  do  not  call  to  mind 
a  single  human  being  who  has  steadily  denied  the 
authority  of  the  laws,  on  the  simple  ground  of  his 
own  moral  nature.  Such  designs,  full  of  genius 
and  full  of  faith  as  they  are,  are  not  entertained 
except  avowedly  as  air-pictures.  If  the  individual 
who  exhibits  them  dare  to  think  them  practicable, 
he  disgusts  scholars  and  churchmen ;  and  men  of 
talent  and  women  of  superior  sentiments  cannot 
hide  their  contempt.  Not  the  less  does  nature  con 
tinue  to  fill  the  heart  of  youth  with  suggestions  of 
this  enthusiasm,  and  there  are  now  men,  —  if  in 
deed  I  can  speak  in  the  plural  number,  —  more  ex 
actly,  I  will  say,  I  have  just  been  conversing  with 
one  man,  to  whom  no  weight  of  adverse  experience 
will  make  it  for  a  moment  appear  impossible  that 
thousands  of  human  beings  might  exercise  towards 
each  other  the  grandest  and  simplest  sentiments, 
as  well  as  a  knot  of  friends,  or  a  pair  of  lovers. 


NOMINALIST  AND  REALIST, 


In  countless  upward-striving  waves 

The  moon-drawn  tide-wave  strives  : 

In  thousand  far-transplanted  grafts 

The  parent  fruit  survives  ; 

So,  in  the  new-born  millions, 

The  perfect  Adam  lives. 

Not  less  are  summer  mornings  dear 

To  every  child  they  wake, 

And  each  with  novel  life  his  sphere 

Fills  for  liis  proper  sake. 


VIII. 
NOMINALIST  AND  EEALIST. 


I  CAXXOT  often  enough  say  that  a  man  is  only  a 
relative  and  representative  nature.  Each  is  a  hint 
of  the  truth,  but  far  enough  from  being  that  truth 
which  yet  he  quite  newly  and  inevitably  suggests 
to  us.  If  I  seek  it  in  him  I  shall  not  find  it.  Could 
any  man  conduct  into  me  the  pure  stream  of  that 
which  lie  pretends  to  be  !  Long  afterwards  I  find 
that  quality  elsewhere  which  he  promised  me.  The 
genius  of  the  Platonists  is  intoxicating  to  the  stu 
dent,  yet  how  few  particulars  of  it  can  I  detach 
from  all  their  books.  The  man  momentarily  stands 
for  the  thought,  but  will  not  bear  examination ;  and 
a  society  of  men  will  cursorily  represent  well  enough 
a  certain  quality  and  culture,  for  example,  chivalry 
or  beauty  of  manners ;  but  separate  them  and  there 
is  no  gentleman  and  no  lady  in  the  group.  The  least 
hint  sets  us  on  the  pursuit  of  a  character  which  no 
man  realizes.  We  have  such  exorbitant  eyes  that 
on  seeing  the  smallest  arc  we  complete  the  curve, 
and  when  the  curtain  is  lifted  from  the  diagram 


216  NOMINALIST  AND  REALIST. 

which  it  seemed  to  veil,  we  are  vexed  to  find  that 
no  more  was  drawn  than  just  that  'fragment  of  an 
arc  which  we  first  beheld.  We  are  greatly  too  lib 
eral  in  our  construction  of  each  other's  faculty  and 
promise.  Exactly  what  the  parties  have  already 
done  they  shall  do  again  ;  but  that  which  we  in 
ferred  from  their  nature  and  inception,  they  will 
not  do.  That  is  in  nature,  but  not  in  them.  That 
happens  in  the  world,  which  we  often  witness  in 
a  public  debate.  Each  of  the  speakers  expresses 
himself  imperfectly  ;  no  one  of  them  hears  much 
that  another  says,  such  is  the  preoccupation  of  mind 
of  each ;  and  the  audience,  who  have  only  to  hear 
and  not  to  speak,  judge  very  wisely  and  superiorly 
how  wrongheaded  and  unskilful  is  each  of  the  de 
baters  to  his  own  affair.  Great  men  or  men  of  great 
gifts  you  shall  easily  find,  but  symmetrical  men 
'never.  When  I  meet  a  pure  intellectual  force  or  a 
generosity  of  affection,  I  believe  here  then  is  man  ; 
and  am  presently  mortified  by  the  discovery  that 
this  individual  is  no  more  available  to  his  own  or  to 
the  general  ends  than  his  companions  ;  because  the 
power  which  drew  my  respect  is  not  supported  by 
the  total  symphony  of  his  talents.  All  persons  exist 
to  society  by  some  shining  trait  of  beauty  or  utility 
which  they  have.  We  borrow  the  proportions  of 
the  man  from  that  one  fine  feature,  and  finish  the 
portrait  symmetrically ;  which  is  false,  for  the  rest 


NOMINALIST  AND  REALIST.  217 

of  his  body  is  small  or  deformed.  I  observe  a  per 
son  who  makes  a  good  public  appearance,  and  con 
clude  thence  the  perfection  of  his  private  character, 
on  which  this  is  based  ;  but  he  has  no  private  char 
acter.  He  is  a  graceful  cloak  or  lay-figure  for  holi 
days.  All  our  poets,  heroes,  and  saints,  fail  utterly 
in  some  one  or  in  many  parts  to  satisfy  our  idea, 
fail  to  draw  our  spontaneous  interest,  and  so  leave 
us  without  any  hope  of  realization  but  in  our  own 
future.  Our  exaggeration  of  all  fine  characters 
arises  from  the  fact  that  we  identify  each  in  turn 
with  the  soul.  But  there  are  no  such  men  as  we 
fable ;  no  Jesus,  nor  Pericles,  nor  Ca3sar,  nor  An- 
gelo,  nor  Washington,  such  as  we  have  made.  We 
consecrate  a  great  deal  of  nonsense  because  it  was 
allowed  by  great  men.  There  is  none  without  his 
foible.  I  believe  that  if  an  angel  should  come  to 
chant  the  chorus  of  the  moral  law,  he  would  eat  too 
much  gingerbread,  or  take  liberties  with  private 
letters,  or  do  some  precious  atrocity.  It  is  bad 
enough  that  our  geniuses  cannot  do  anything  use 
M,  but  it  is  worse  that  no  man  is  fit  for  society 
who  has  fine  traits.  He  is  admired  at  a  distance, 
but  he  cannot  come  near  without  appearing  a  crip 
ple.  The  men  of  fine  parts  protect  themselves  by 
solitude,  or  by  courtesy,  or  by  satire,  or  by  an  acid 
worldly  manner ;  each  concealing  as  he  best  can 
his  incapacity  for  useful  association,  but  they  want 
either  love  or  self-reliance. 


218  NOMINALIST  AND  REALIST. 

Our  native  love  of  reality  joins  with  this  experi 
ence  to  teach  us  a  little  reserve,  and  to  dissuade 
a  too  sudden  surrender  to  the  brilliant  qualities  of 
persons.  Young  people  admire  talents  or  particu 
lar  excellences  ;  as  we  grow  older  we  value  total 
powers  and  effects,  as  the  impression,  the  quality, 
the  spirit  of  men  and  things.  The  genius  is  all. 
The  man,  —  it  is  his  system  :  we  do  not  try  a  soli 
tary  word  or  act,  but  his  habit.  The  acts  which 
you  praise,  I  praise  not,  since  they  are  departures 
from  his  faith,  and  are  mere  compliances.  The 
magnetism  which  arranges  tribes  and  races  in  one 
polarity  is  alone  to  be  respected  ;  the  men  are  steel- 
filings.  Yet  we  unjustly  select  a  particle,  and  say, 
4  O  steel-filing  number  one !  what  heart-drawings 
I  feel  to  thee !  what  prodigious  virtues  are  these  of 
thine  !  how  constitutional  to  thee,  and  incommuni 
cable  ! '  Whilst  we  speak  the  loadstone  is  with 
drawn  ;  down  falls  our  filing  in  a  heap  with  the 
rest,  and  we  continue  our  mummery  to  the  wretched 
/  shaving.  Let  us  go  for  universals ;  for  the  mag- 
/  netism,  not  for  the  needles.  Human  life  and  its 
I  persons  are  poor  empirical  pretensions.  A  personal 
influence  is  an  ignis  fatuus.  If  they  say  it  is  great, 
it  is  great ;  if  they  say  it  is  small,  it  is  small ;  you 
see  it,  and  you  see  it  not,  by  turns  ;  it  borrows  all 
its  size  from  the  momentary  estimation  of  the  speak 
ers  :  the  Will-of-the-wisp  vanishes  if  you  go  too 


NOMINALIST  AND  REALIST.  219 

near,  vanishes  if  you  go  too  far,  and  only  blazes  at 
one  angle.  Who  can  tell  if  Washington  be  a  great 
man  or  no  ?  Who  can  tell  if  Franklin  be  ?  Yes, 
or  any  but  the  twelve,  or  six,  or  three  great  gods 
of  fame  ?  And  they  too  loom  and  fade  before  the 
eternal. 

We  are  amphibious  creatures,  weaponed  for  two 
elements,  having' two  sets  of  faculties^JihA  particu 
lar  and  the^  catholic.  We  adjust  our  instrument 
for  general  observation,  and  sweep  the  heavens  as 
easily  as  we  pick  out  a  single  figure  in  the  terres 
trial  landscape.  We  are  practically  skilful  in  de 
tecting  elements  for  which  we  have  no  place  in  our 
theory,  and  no  name.  Thus  we  are  very  sensible 
of  an  atmospheric  influence  in  men  and  in  bodies 
of  men,  not  accounted  for  in  an  arithmetical  ad 
dition  of  all  their  measurable  properties.  There 
is  a  genius  of  a  nation,  which  is  not  to  be  found 
in  the  numerical  citizens,  but  which  characterizes 
the  society.  England,  strong,  punctual,  practical, 
well-spoken  England  I 'should  not  find  if  I  should 
go  to  the  island  to  seek  it.  In  the  parliament, 
in  the  play-house,  at  dinner-tables,  I  might  see  a 
great  number  of  rich,  ignorant,  book-read,  conven 
tional,  proud  men,  —  many  old  women,  —  and  not 
anywhere  the  Englishman  who  made  the  good 
speeches,  combined  the  accurate  engines,  and  did 
the  bold  and  nervous  deeds.  It  is  even  worse  in 


220  NOMINALIST  AND  REALIST. 

America,  where,  from  the  intellectual  quickness  of 
the  race,  the  genius  of  the  country  is  more  splen 
did  in  its  promise  and  more  slight  in  its  perform 
ance.  Webster  cannot  do  the  work  of  Webster. 
We  conceive  distinctly  enough  the  French,  the 
Spanish,  the  German  genius,  and  it  is  not  the  less 
real  that  perhaps  we  should  not  meet  in  either  of 
those  nations  a  single  individual  who  corresponded 
with  the  type.  We  infer  the  spirit  of  the  nation 
in  great  measure  from  the  language,  which  is  a 
sort  of  monument  to  which  each  forcible  individual 
in  a  course  of  many  hundred  years  has  contributed 
a  stone.  And,  universally,  a  good  example  of  this 
social  force  is  the  veracity  of  language,  which  can 
not  be  debauched.  In  any  controversy  concerning 
morals,  an  appeal  may  be  made  with  safety  to  the 
sentiments  which  the  language  of  the  people  ex 
presses.  Proverbs,  words,  and  grammar-inflections 
convey  the  public  sense  with  more  purity  and  pre 
cision  than  the  wisest  individual. 

In  the  famous  dispute  with  the  Nominalists,  the 
Eealists  had  a  good  deal  of  reason.     General  ideas 
are  essences.  JThejyjjiTeju^^ 
ennoble  the  most  partia^ju^jsp^ 

to  details  cannot  gjjite  degrade^  our 


life  and  divest  it  of  poetry.  The  day-laborer  is 
"recEonect  as  standing  at  the  foot  of  the  social  scale, 
yet  he  is  saturated  with  the  laws  of  the  world. 


NOMINALIST  AND  REALIST.  221 

His  measures  are  the  hours ;  morning  and  night, 
solstice  and  equinox,  geometry,  astronomy  and  all 
the  lovely  accidents  of  nature  play  through  his 
mind.  Money,  which  represents  the  prose  of  life, 
and  which  is  hardly  spoken  of  in  parlors  without 
an  apology,  is,  in  its  effects  and  laws,  as  beautiful 
as  roses.  Property  keeps  the  accounts  of  the  world, 
and  is  always  moral.  The  property  will  be  found 
where  the  labor,  the  wisdom,  and  the  virtue  have 
been  in  nations,  in  classes,  and  (the  whole  life-time 
considered,  with  the  compensations)  in  the  individ 
ual  also.  How  wise  the  world  appears,  when  the 
laws  and  usages  of  nations  are  largely  detailed,  and 
the  completeness  of  the  municipal  system  is  consid 
ered  !  Nothing  is  left  out.  If  you  go  into  the 
markets  and  the  custom-houses,  the  insurers'  and 
notaries'  offices,  the  offices  of  sealers  of  weights  and 
measures,  of  inspection  of  provisions,  —  it  will  ap 
pear  as  if  one  man  had  made  it  all.  Wherever 
you  go,  a  wit  like  your  own  has  been  before  you, 
and  has  realized  its  thought.  The  Eleusinian  mys 
teries,  the  Egyptian  architecture,  the  Indian  as 
tronomy,  the  Greek  sculpture,  show  that  there  al 
ways  were  seeing  and  knowing  men  in  the  planet. 
The  world  is  full  of  masonic  ties,  of  guilds,  of  se 
cret  and  public  legions  of  honor  ;  that  of  scholars, 
for  example  ;  and  that  of  gentlemen,  fraternizing 
with  the  upper  class  of  every  country  and  every 
culture. 


222  NOMINALIST  AND  REALIST. 

I  am  very  much  struck  in  literature  by  the  ap 
pearance  that  one  person  wrote  all  the  books  ;  as  if 
the  editor  of  a  journal  planted  his  body  of  report 
ers  in  different  parts  of  the  field  of  action,  and  re 
lieved  some  by  others  from  time  to  time  ;  but  there 
is  such  equality  and  identity  both  of  judgment  and 
point  of  view  in  the  narrative  that  it  is  plainly 
the  work  of  one  all-seeing,  all-hearing  gentleman. 
I  looked  into  Pope's  Odyssey  yesterday :  it  is  as 
correct  and  elegant  after  our  canon  of  to-day  as  if 
it  were  newly  written.  The  modernness  of  all  good 
books  seems  to  give  me  an  existence  as  wide  as 
man.  "What  is  well  done  I  feel  as  if  I  did  ;  what 
is  ill  done  I  reck  not  of.  Shakspeare's  passages  of 
passion  (for  example,  in  Lear  and  Hamlet)  are  in 
the  very  dialect  of  the  present  year.  I  am  faithful 
again  to  the  whole  over  the  members  in  my  use  of 
books.  I  find  the  most  pleasure  in  reading  a  book 
in  a  manner  least  flattering  to  the  author.  I  read 
Proclus,  and  sometimes  Plato,  as  I  might  read  a 
dictionary,  for  a  mechanical  help  to  the  fancy  and 
the  imagination.  I  read  for  the  lustres,  as  if  one 
should  use  a  fine  picture  in  a  chromatic  experiment, 
for  its  rich  colors.  'T  is  not  Proclus,  but  a  piece  of 
nature  and  fate  that  I  explore.  It  is  a  greater  joy 
to  see  the  author's  author,  than  himself.  A  higher 
pleasure  of  the  same  kind  I  found  lately  at  a  con 
cert,  where  I  went  to  hear  Handel's  Messiah.  As 


NOMINALIST  AND  REALIST.  223 

the  master  overpowered  the  littleness  and  incapa- 
bleness  of  the  performers  and  made  them  conduc 
tors  of  his  electricity,  so  it  was  easy  to  observe 
what  efforts  nature  was  making,  through  so  many 
hoarse,  wooden,  and  imperfect  persons,  to  produce 
beautiful  voices,  fluid  and  soul-guided  men  and 
women.  The  genius  of  nature  was  paramount  at 
the  oratorio. 

This  preference  of  the  genius  to  the  parts  is  the 
secret  of  that  deification  of  art,  which  is  found  in 
all  superior  minds.  Art,  in  the  artist,  is  propor 
tion,  or  a  habitual  respect  to  the  whole  by  an  eye 
loving  beauty  in  details.  And  the  wonder  and 
charm  of  it  is  the  sanity  in  insanity  which  it  de 
notes.  Proportion  is  almost  impossible  to  human  j 
beings.  There  is  no  one  who  does  not  exaggerate./ 
In  conversation,  men  are  encumbered  with  person 
ality,  and  talk  too  much.  In  modern  sculpture, 
picture,  and  poetry,  the  beauty  is  miscellaneous ; 
the  artist  works  here  and  there  and  at  all  points, 
adding  and  adding,  instead  of  unfolding  the  unit  of 
his  thought.  Beautiful  details  we  must  have,  or  no 
artist ;  but  they  must  be  means  and  never  other. 
The  eye  must  not  lose  sight  for  a  moment  of  the 
purpose.  Lively  boys  write  to  their  ear  and  eye,  and 
the  cool  reader  finds  nothing  but  sweet  jingles  in  it. 
When  they  grow  older,  they  respect  the  argument. 

We  obey  the  same  intellectual  integrity  when  we 


224  NOMINALIST  AND  REALIST. 

study  in  exceptions  the  law  of  the  world.  Anom 
alous  facts,  as  the  never  quite  obsolete  rumors  of 
magic  and  demonology,  and  the  new  allegations  of 
phrenologists  and  neurologists,  are  of  ideal  use. 
They  are  good  indications.  Homosopathy  is  insig 
nificant  as  an  art  of  healing,  but  of  great  value  as 
criticism  on  the  hygeia  or  medical  practice  of  the 
time.  So  with  Mesmerism,  Swedenborgism,  Fou- 
rierism,  and  the  Millennial  Church ;  they  are  poor 
pretensions  enough,  but  good  criticism  on  the  sci 
ence,  philosophy,  and  preaching  of  the  day.  For 
these  abnormal  insights  of  the  adepts  ought  to  be 
normal,  and  things  of  course. 

things  show  us  that  on  every  side  we  are  very 
to  the  best.  It  seems  not  worth  while  to  exe- 
ite  with  too  much  pains  some  one  intellectual,  or 
sesthetical,  or  civil  feat,  when  presently  the  dream 
will  scatter,  and  we  shall  burst  into  universal  power. 
The  reason  of  idleness  and  of  crime  is  the  deferring 
of  our  hopes.  Whilst  we  are  waiting  we  beguile 
the  time  with  jokes,  with  sleep,  with  eating,  and 
^with  crimes. 

Thus  we  settle  it  in  our  cool  libraries,  that  all  the 
agents  with  which  we  deal  are  subalterns,  which  we, 
can  well  afford  to  let  pass,  and  life  will  be  simpler 
when  we  live  at  the  centre  and  flout  the  surfaces. 
I  wish  to  speak  with  all  respect  of  persons,  but  some- 


NOMINALIST  AND  REALIST.  225 

times  I  must  pinch  myself  to  keep  awake  and  pre 
serve  the  due  decorum.  They  melt  so  fast  into  each 
other  that  they  are  like  grass  and  trees,  and  it  needs 
an  effort  to  treat  them  as  individuals.  Though  the 
uninspired  man  certainly  finds  persons  a  conven- 
iency  in  household  matters,  the  divine  man  does  not 
respect  them ;  he  sees  them  as  a  rack  of  clouds,  or 
a  fleet  of  ripples  which  the  wind  drives  over  the  sur 
face  of  the  water.  But  this  is  flat  rebellion.  Na 
ture  will  not  be  Buddhist :  she  resents  generalizing, 
and  insults  the  philosopher  in  every  moment  with  a 
million  of  fresh  particulars.  It  is  all  idle  talking : 
as  much  as  a  man  is  a  whole,  so  is  he  also  a  part ; 
and  it  were  partial  not  to  see  it.  What  you  say  in 
your  pompous  distribution  only  distributes  you  into 
your  class  and  section.  You  have  not  got  rid  of 
parts  by  denying  them,  but  are  the  more  partial. 
You  are  one  thing,  but  Nature  is  one  thing  and  the 
other  thing,  in  the  same  moment.  She  will  not  re 
main  orbed  in  a  thought,  but  rushes  into  persons ; 
and  when  each  person,  inflamed  to  a  fury  of  person 
ality,  would  conquer  all  things  to  his  poor  crotchet, 
she  raises  up  against  him  another  person,  and  by 
many  persons  incarnates  again  a  sort  of  whole. 
She  will  have  all.  Nick  Bottom  cannot  play  all 
the  parts,  work  it  how  he  may  ;  there  will  be  some 
body  else,  and  the  world  will  be  round.  Everything 
must  have  its  flower  or  effort  at  the  beautiful, 

vor,.  in.  15 


226  NOMINALIST  AND  REALIST. 

coarser  or  finer  according  to  its  stuff.  They  re 
lieve  and  recommend  each  other,  and  the  sanity  of 
society  is  a  balance  of  a  thousand  insanities.  She 
punishes  abstractionists,  and  will  only  forgive  an  in 
duction  which  is  rare  and  casual.  We  like  to  come 
to  a  height  of  land  and  see  the  landscape,  just  as  we 
value  a  general  remark  in  conversation.  But  it  is 
not  the  intention  of  Nature  that  we  should  live  by 
general  views.  We  fetch  fire  and  water,  run  about 
all  day  among  the  shops  and  markets,  and  get  our 
clothes  and  shoes  made  and  mended,  and  are  the 
victims  of  these  details ;  and  once  in  a  fortnight  we 
arrive  perhaps  at  a  rational  moment.  If  we  were 
not  thus  infatuated,  if  we  saw  the  real  from  hour 
to  hour,  we  should  not  be  here  to  write  and  to  read, 
but  should  have  been  burned  or  frozen  long  ago. 
She  would  never  get  anything  done,  if  she  suffered 
admirable  Crichtons  and  universal  geniuses.  She 
loves  better  a  wheelwright  who  dreams  all  night  of 
wheels,  and  a  groom  who  is  part  of  his  horse ;  for 
she  is  full  of  work,  and  these  are  her  hands.  As 
the  frugal  farmer  takes  care  that  his  cattle  shall 
eat  down  the  rowen,  and  swine  shall  eat  the  waste 
of  his  house,  and  poultry  shall  pick  the  crumbs,  — 
so  our  economical  mother  dispatches  a  new  genius 
and  habit  of  mind  into  every  district  and  condition 
of  existence,  plants  an  eye  wherever  a  new  ray  of 
light  can  fall,  and  gathering  up  into  some  man 


NOMINALIST  AND  REALIST.  227 

every  property  in  the  universe,  establishes  thou 
sandfold  occult  mutual  attractions  among  her  off 
spring,  that  all  this  wash  and  waste  of  power  may 
be  imparted  and  exchanged. 

Great  dangers  undoubtedly  accrue  from  this  in 
carnation  and  distribution  of  the  godhead,  and 
hence  Nature  has  her  maligners,  as  if  she  were 
Circe;  and  Alphonso  of  Castile  fancied  he  could 
have  given  useful  advice.  But  she  does  not  go  un 
provided  ;  she  has  hellebore  at  the  bottom  of  the 
cup.  Solitude  would  ripen  a  plentiful  crop  of  des 
pots.  The  recluse  thinks  of  men  as  having  his 
manner,  or  as  not  having  his  manner ;  and  as  hav 
ing  degrees  of  it,  more  and  less.  But  when  he 
comes  into  a  public  assembly  he  sees  that  men  have 
very  different  manners  from  his  own,  and  in  their 
way  admirable.  In  his  childhood  and  youth  he  has 
had  many  checks  and  censures,  and  thinks  mod 
estly  enough  of  his  own  endowment.  When  after 
wards  he  comes  to  unfold  it  in  propitious  circum 
stance,  it  seems  the  only  talent ;  he  is  delighted 
with  his  success,  and  accounts  himself  already  the 
fellow  of  the  great.  But  he  goes  into  a  mob,  into 
a  banking  house,  into  a  mechanic's  shop,  into  a 
mill,  into  a  laboratory,  into  a  ship,  into  a  camp,  and 
in  each  new  place  he  is  no  better  than  an  idiot ; 
other  talents  take  place,  and  rule  the  hour.  The 
rotation  which  whirls  every  leaf  and  pebble  to  the 


228  NOMINALIST  AND  REALIST. 

meridian,  reaches  to  every  gift  of  man,  and  we  all 
take  turns  at  the  top. 

/  For  Nature,  who  abhors  mannerism,  has  set  her 
/  heart  on  breaking  up  all  styles  and  tricks,  and  it 
I  is  so  much  easier  to  do  what  one  has  done  before 
than  to  do  a  new  thing,  that  there  is  a  perpetual 
tendency  to  a  set  mode.  In  every  conversation, 
even  the  highest,  there  is  a  certain  trick,  which 
may  be  soon  learned  by  an  acute  person  and  then 
that  particular  style  continued  indefinitely.  Each 
man  too  is  a  tyrant  in  tendency,  because  he  would 
impose  his  idea  on  others  ;  and  their  trick  is  their 
natural  defence.  Jesus  would  absorb  the 


but  Tom  Paine  or  the  coarsest  blasphemer  helps 
humanity  by  resisting  this  exuberance  of  power. 
\  HenceTIie~immense  benefit  ofparty  in  politics,  as 
it  reveals  faults  of  character  in  a  chief,  which  the 
intellectual  force  of  the  persons,  with  ordinary  op 
portunity  and  not  hurled  into  aphelion  by  hatred, 
could  not  have  seen.  Since  we  are  all  so  stupid, 
what  benefit  that  there  should  be  two  stupidities  ! 
It  is  like  that  brute  advantage  so  essential  to  as 
tronomy,  of  having  the  diameter  of  the  earth's  or 
bit  for  a  base  of  its  triangles.  Democracy  is  mo 
rose,  and  runs  to  anarchy,  but  in  the  State  and  in 
the  schools  it  is  indispensable  to  resist  the  consol 
idation  of  all  men  into  a  few  men.  If  John  was 
perfect,  why  are  you  and  I  alive  ?  As  long  as  any 


NOMINALIST  AND  REALIST.  229 

man  exists,  there  is  some  need  of  him ;  let  him  / 
fight  for  his  own.  A  new  poet  has  appeared ;  a 
new  character  approached  us;  why  should  we  re 
fuse  to  eat  bread  until  we  have  found  his  regiment 
and  section  in  our  old  army-files  ?  Why  not  a  new 
man  ?  Here  is  a  new  enterprise  of  Brook  Farm, 
of  Skeneateles,  of  Northampton  :  why  so  impatient 
to  baptize  them  Essenes,  or  Port-Royalists,  or 
Shakers,  or  by  any  known  and  effete  name  ?  Let 
it  be  a  new  way  of  living.  Why  have  only  two  or 
three  ways  of  life,  and  not  thousands  ?  Every 
man  is  wanted,  and  no  man  is  wanted  much.  ^V$-e — ^ 
came  this  time  for  condiments,  not  for  corn.  We 
WSnTlhe  great  genius  only  for  joy ;  for  olie  star 
'more  in  ourconstellation,  for  one  tree  more  in  our 
grove.  But  he  thinks  we  wish  to  belong  to  him,  as 
he  wishes  to  occupy  us.  He  greatly  mistakes  us. 
I  think  I  have  done  well  if  I  have  acquired  a  new 
word  from  a  good  author ;  and  my  business  with 
him  is  to  find  my  own,  though  it  were  only  to  melt 
him  down  into  an  epithet  or  an  image  for  daily 
use:  — 

"  Into  paint  will  I  grind  thee,  my  bride  !  " 

To  embroil  the  confusion,  and  make  it  impossi 
ble  to  arrive  at  any  general  statement,  —  when  we 
have  insisted  on  the  imperfection  of  individuals, 
our  affections  and  our  experience  urge  that  every 


230  NOMINALIST  AND  REALIST. 

individual  is  entitled  to  honor,  and  a  very  generous 
treatment  is  sure  to  be  repaid.  A  recluse  sees  only 
two  or  three  persons,  and  allows  them  all  their 
room  ;  they  spread  themselves  at  large.  The  states 
man  looks  at  many,  and  compares  the  few  habitu 
ally  with  others,  and  these  look  less.  Yet  are  they 
not  entitled  to  this  generosity  of  reception  ?  and  is 
not  munificence  the  means  of  insight  ?  For  though 
gamesters  say  that  the  cards  beat  all  the  players, 
though  they  were  never  so  skilful,  yet  in  the  con 
test  we  are  now  considering,  the  players  are  also 
the  game,  and  share  the  power  of  the  cards.  If 
you  criticise  a  fine  genius,  the  odds  are  that  you 
are  out  of  your  reckoning,  and  instead  of  the  poet, 
are  censuring  your  own  caricature  of  him.  For 
there  is  somewhat  spheral  and  infinite  in  every 
man,  especially  in  every  genius,  which,  if  you  can 
come  very  near  him,  sports  with  all  your  limita 
tions.  For  rightly  p^ery  man  is  a  channel  through 
which  heaven  floweth,  and  whilst  I_jancied  I  was_ 
criticisingj*  him.  I  was  censuring  or  rather  terminat 
ing  my  own  soul.  After  taxing  Goethe  as  a  cour- 
tier,  artificial,  unbelieving,  worldly,  —  I  took  up 
this  book  of  Helena,  and  found  him  an  Indian  of 
the  wilderness,  a  piece  of  pure  nature  like  an  apple 
or  an  oak,  large  as  morning  or  night,  and  virtuous 
as  a  brier-rose. 

But  care  is  taken  that  the  whole  tune  shall  be 


NOMINALIST  AND  REALIST.  231 

played.  If  we  were  not  kept  among  surfaces, 
everything  would  be  large  and  universal ;  now  the 
excluded  attributes  burst  in  on  us  with  the  more 
brightness  that  they  have  been  excluded.  "  Your 
turn  now,  my  turn  next,"  is  the  rule  of  the  game. 
The  universality  being  hindered  in  its  primary 
form,  comes  in  the  secondary  form  of  all  sides; 
the  points  come  in  succession  to  the  meridian,  and 
by  the  speed  of  rotation  a  new  whole  is  formed. 
Nature  keeps  herself  whole  and  her  representation 
complete  in  the  experience  of  each  mind.  She 
suffers  no  seat  to  be  vacant  in  her  college.  It  is 
the  secret  of  the  world  that  all  things  subsist  and 
do  not  die  but  only  retire  a  little  from  sight  and 
afterwards  return  again.  Whatever  does  not  con 
cern  us  is  concealed  from  us.  As  soon  as  a  person 
is  110  longer  related  to  our  present  well-being,  he  is 
concealed,  or  dies,  as  we  say.  Really,  all  things 
and  persons  are  related  to  us,  but  according  to 
our  nature  they  act  on  us  not  at  once  but  in  suc 
cession,  and  we  are  made  aware  of  their  presence 
one  at  a  time.  All  persons,  all  things  which  we 
have  known,  are  here  present,  and  many  more  than 
we  see  ;  the  world  is  full.  As  the  ancient  said,  the 
world  is  a  plenum  or  solid;  and  if  we  saw  all 
things  that  really  surround  us  we  should  be  impris 
oned  and  unable  to  move.  For  though  nothing  is 
impassable  to  the  soul,  but  all  things  are  pervious 


232  NOMINALIST  AND  REALIST. 

to  it  and  like  highways,  yet  this  is  only  whilst  the 
soul  does  not  see  them.  As  soon  as  the  soul  sees 
any  object,  it  stops  before  that  object.  Therefore 
the  divine  Providence  which  keeps  the  universe 
open  in  every  direction  to  the  soul,  conceals  all  the 
furniture  and  all  the  persons  that  do  not  concern  a 
particular  soul,  from  the  senses  of  that  individual. 
Through  solidest  eternal  things  the  man  finds  his 
road  as  if  they  did  not  subsist,  and  does  not  once 
suspect  their  being.  As  soon  as  he  needs  a  new 
object,  suddenly  he  beholds  it,  and  no  longer  at 
tempts  to  pass  through  it,  but  takes  another  way. 
When  he  has  exhausted  for  the  time  the  nourish 
ment  to  be  drawn  from  any  one  person  or  thing, 
that  object  is  withdrawn  from  his  observation,  and 
though  still  in  his  immediate  neighborhood,  he  does 
not  suspect  its  presence.  Nothing  is  dead :  men 
feign  themselves  dead,  and  endure  mock  funerals 
and  mournful  obituaries,  and  there  they  stand  look 
ing  out  of  the  window,  sound  and  well,  in  some  new 
and  strange  disguise.  Jesus  is  not  dead;  he  is 
very  well  alive  :  nor  John,  nor  Paul,  nor  Mahomet, 
nor  Aristotle  ;  at  times  we  believe  we  have  seen 
them  all,  and  could  easily  tell  the  names  under 
which  they  go. 

If  we  cannot  make  voluntary  and  conscious 
steps  in  the  admirable  science  of  universals,  let  us 
see  the  parts  wisely,  and  infer  the  genius  of  nature 


NOMINALIST  AND  REALIST.  233 

from  the  best  particulars  with  a  becoming  charity. 
What  is  best  in  each  kind  is  an  index  of  what 
should  be  the  average  of  that  thing.  Love  shows 
me  the  opulence  of  nature,  by  disclosing  to  me  in 
my  friend  a  hidden  wealth,  and  I  infer  an  equal 
depth  of  good  in  every  other  direction.  It  is  com 
monly  said  by  farmers  that  a  good  pear  or  apple 
costs  no  more  time  or  pains  to  rear  than  a  poor 
one ;  so  I  would  have  no  work  of  art,  no  speech,  or 
action,  or  thought,  or  friend,  but  the  best. 

The  end  and  the  means,  the  gamester  and  the 
game,  —  life  is  made  up  of  the  intermixture  and 
reaction  of  these  two  amicable  powers,  whose  mar 
riage  appears  beforehand  monstrous,  as  each  denies 
and  tends  to  abolish  the  other.  We  must  reconcile 
the  contradictions  as  we  can,  but  their  discord  and 
their  concord  introduce  wild  absurdities  into  our 
thinking  and  speech.  No  sentence  will  hold  the 
whole  truth,  and  the  only  way  in  which  we  can  be 
just,  is  by  giving  ourselves  the  lie  ;  Speech  is  bet 
ter  than  silence  :  silence  is  better  than  speech  ;  — 
All  things  are  in  contact ;  every  atomjhas_a  sphere- 
6f  rep^lgjfF1  •  —  Things  aret  and  are  not^  p+-  *-hp. 
gt^T>P>  J-.IITIP.  •  —  ami  fhp/Mkp^  All  the  universe  over, 
-there  is  but  one  thing,  this  old  Two-Face,  creator^, 
creature,  mind-matter,  right-wrong,__of_whi< 
)ropoaTEioTr  may  be  affirmed^oFdenied.  Very  fitly 
therefore  I  assert  that  every  man  is  a  partialist ; 


234  NOMINALIST  AND  REALIST. 

vjhatjaature  secures  him  as  ?•"  instrument  by  self- 
conceit,  preventing  the  tendencies  to  religion  and  ^ 
science  ;  [and  now  further  assert,  that,  each  man's 
bein^nearly  and  affectionately  explored,  he 


and  now  I  add  that  every 


man  is  a  universalist  also,  and,  as  our  earth,  whilst 
it  spins  on  its  own  axis,  spins  all  the  time  around 
the  sun  through  the  celestial  spaces,  so  the  least  of 
its  rational  children,  the  most  dedicated  to  his  pri 
vate  affair,  works  out,  though  as  it  were  under 
a  disguise,  the  universal  problem.  We  fancy  men 
are  individuals ;  so  are  pumpkins ;  but  every  pump 
kin  in  the  field  goes  through  every  point  of  pump 
kin  history.  The  rabid  democrat,  as  soon  as  he  is 
senator  and  rich  man,  has  ripened  beyond  possibil 
ity  of  sincere  radicalism,  and  unless  he  can  resist 
the  sun,  he  must  be  conservative  the  remainder  of 
his  days.  Lord  Eldon  said  in  his  old  age  that  u  if 
he  were  to  begin  life  again,  he  would  be  damned 
but  he  would  begin  as  agitator." 

We  hide  thisimiversality  if  wjj_cjm,but  it  ap 
pears  at  all  points.  We  are  as  ungrateful  as  chil 
dren.  There  is  nothing  we  cherish  and  strive  to 
draw  to  usBufih  some  Hour  we  Turn  and  rend"  it. 
We  keep  a  running  fire  of  sarcasm  at  ignorance 
and  the  life  of  the  senses ;  then  goes  by,  perchance, 
a  fair  girl,  a  piece  of  life,  gay  and  happy,  and 


NOMINALIST  AND  REALIST. 

making  the  commonest  offices  beautiful  by  the  en- 
ergy  and  heart  with  which  she  does  them  ;  and  see 
ing  this  we  admire  and  love  her  and  them,  and  say, 
'  Lo  !  a  genuine  creature  of  the  fair  earth,  not  dis 
sipated  or  too  early  ripened  by  books,  philosophy, 
religion,  society,  or  care ! '  insinuating  a  treachery 
and  contempt  for  all  we  had  so  long  loved  and 
wrought  in  ourselves  and  others. 

If  we  could  have  any  security  against  moods ! 
If  the  profoundest  prophet  could  be  holden  to  his 
words,  and  the  hearer  who  is  ready  to  sell  all  and 
join  the  crusade  could  have  any  certificate  that  to 
morrow  his  prophet  shall  not  unsay  his  testimony ! 
But  the  Truth  sits  veiled  there  on  the  Bench,  and 
never  interposes  an  adamantine  syllable ;  and  the 
most  sincere  and  revolutionary  doctrine,  put  as  if 
the  ark  of  God  were  carried  forward  some  furlongs, 
and  planted  there  for  the  succor  of  the  world,  shall 
in  a  few  weeks  be  coldly  set  aside  by  the  same 
speaker,  as  morbid ;  "  I  thought  Iwas  right,  but  I 
wasjiot^^  and  the  same  immeasurable  credulity 
demanded  for  new  audacities.  If  we  were  not  of 
all  opinions  !  if  we  did  not  in  any  moment  shift  the 
platform  on  which  we  stand,  and  look  and  speak 
from  another  !  if  there  could  be  any  regulation, 
any  '  one-hour-rule,'  that  a  man  should  never  leave 
his  point  of  view  without  sound  of  trumpet.  I 
am  always  insincere,  as  always  knowing  there  are 
other  moods. 


236  NOMINALIST  AND  REALIST. 

How  sincere  and  confidential  we  can  be,  saying 
all  that  lies  in  the  mind,  and  yet  go  away  feeling 
that  all  is  yet  unsaid,  from  the  incapacity  of  the 
parties  to  know  each  other,  although  they  use  the 
same  words !  My  companion  assumes  to  know  my 
mood  and  habit  of  thought,  and  we  go  on  from 
explanation  to  explanation  until  all  is  said  which 
words  can,  and  we  leave  matters  just  as  they  were 
at  first,  because  of  that  vicious  assumption.  Is  it 
that  every  man  believes  every  other  to  be  an  in 
curable  partialist,  and  himself  a  universalist  ?  I 
talked  yesterday  with  a  pair  of  philosophers  ;  I  en 
deavored  to  show  my  good  men  that  I  liked  every 
thing  by  turns  and  nothing  long  ;  that  I  loved  the 
centre,  but  doated  on  the  superficies ;  that  I  loved 
man,  if  men  seemed  to  me  mice  and  rats  ;  that  I 
revered  saints,  but  woke  up  glad  that  the  old  pagan 
world  stood  its  ground  and  died  hard ;  that  I  was 
glad  of  men  of  every  gift  and  nobility,  but  would 
not  live  in  their  arms.  Could  they  but  once  under 
stand  that  I  loved  to  know  that  they  existed,  and 
heartily  wished  them  God-speed,  yet,  out  of  my 
poverty  of  life  and  thought,  had  no  word  or  wel 
come  for  them  when  they  came  to  see  me,  and 
could  well  consent  to  their  living  in  Oregon  for 
any  claim  I  felt  on  them,  —  it  would  be  a  great 
satisfaction. 


NEW  ENGLAND  REFORMERS. 


In  the  suburb,  in  the  town, 
On  the  railway,  in  the  square, 
Came  a  beam  of  goodness  down 
Doubling  daylight  everywhere: 
Peace  now  each  for  malice  takes, 
Beauty  for  his  sinful  weeds, 
For  the  angel  Hope  aye  makes 
Him  an  angel  whom  she  leads. 


NEW  ENGLAND  REFOKMEKS. 

A    LECTURE  READ  BEFORE    THE    SOCIETY  IN   AMORY 
HALL,  ON  SUNDAY,  MARCH  3,  1844. 

WHOEVER  has  had  opportunity  of  acquaintance 
with  society  in  New  England  during  the  last  twen 
ty-five  years,  with  those  middle  and  with  those  lead 
ing  sections  that  may  constitute  any  just  represen 
tation  of  the  character  and  aim  of  the  community, 
will  have  been  struck  with  the  great  activity  of 
thought  and  experimenting.  His  attention  must  be 
commanded  by  the  signs  that  the  Church,  or  relig 
ious  party,  is  falling  from  the  Church  nominal,  and 
is  appearing  in  temperance  and  non-resistance  socie 
ties;  in  movements  of  abolitionists  and  of  social 
ists  ;  and  in  very  significant  assemblies  called  Sab 
bath  and  Bible  Conventions  ;  composed  of  ultraists, 
of  seekers,  of  all  the  soul  of  the  soldiery  of  dissent, 
and  meeting  to  call  in  question  the  authority  of  the 
Sabbath,  of  the  priesthood,  and  of  the  Church.  In 
these  movements  nothing  was  more  remarkable 
than  the  discontent  they  begot  in  the  movers.  The 
spirit  of  protest  and  of  detachment  drove  the  mem 
bers  of  these  Conventions  to  bear  testimony  against 


240  NEW  ENGLAND  REFORMERS. 

the  Church,  and  immediately  afterwards  to  declare 
their  discontent  with  these  Conventions,  their  inde 
pendence  of  their  colleagues,  and  their  impatience 
of  the  methods  whereby  they  were  working.  They 
defied  each  other,  like  a  congress  of  kings,  each  of 
whom  had  a  realm  to  rule,  and  a  way  of  his  own 
that  made  concert  unprofitable.  What  a  fertility 
of  projects  for  the  salvation  of  the  world  !  One 
apostle  thought  all  men  should  go  to  farming,  and 
another  that  no  man  should  buy  or  sell,  that  the  use 
of  money  was  the  cardinal  evil ;  another  that  the 
mischief  was  in  our  diet,  that  we  eat  and  drink 
damnation.  These  made  unleavened  bread,  and 
were  foes  to  the  death,  to  fermentation.  It  was  in 
vain  urged  by  the  housewife  that  God  made  yeast, 
as  well  as  dough,  and  loves  fermentation  just  as 
dearly  as  he  loves  vegetation;  that  fermentation 
develops  the  saccharine  element  in  the  grain,  and 
makes  it  more  palatable  and  more  digestible.  No  ; 
they  wish  the  pure  wheat,  and  will  die  but  it  shall 
not  ferment.  Stop,  dear  nature,  these  incessant 
advances  of  thine  ;  let  us  scotch  these  ever-rolling 
wheels !  Others  attacked  the  system  of  agricul 
ture,  the  use  of  animal  manures  in  farming,  and 
the  tyranny  of  man  over  brute  nature  ;  these  abuses 
polluted  his  food.  The  ox  must  be  taken  from  the 
plough  and  the  horse  from  the  cart,  the  hundred 
acres  of  the  farm  must  be  spaded,  and  the  man  must 


NEW  ENGLAND  REFORMERS.  241 

walk,  wherever  boats  and  locomotives  will  not  carry 
him.  Even  the  insect  world  was  to  be  defended,  — 
that  had  been  too  long  neglected,  and  a  society  for 
the  protection  of  ground-worms,  slugs,  and  mosqui- 
tos  was  to  be  incorporated  without  delay.  "With 
these  appeared  the  adepts  of  homoeopathy,  of  hy 
dropathy,  of  mesmerism,  of  phrenology,  and  their 
wonderful  theories  of  the  Christian  miracles!  Oth 
ers  assailed  particular  vocations,  as  that  of  the  law 
yer,  that  of  the  merchant,  of  the  manufacturer,  of 
the  clergyman,  of  the  scholar.  Others  attacked  the 
institution  of  marriage  as  the  fountain  of  social 
evils.  Others  devoted  themselves  to  the  worrying 
of  churches  and  meetings  for  public  worship  ;  and 
the  fertile  forms  of  antinomianism  among  the  elder 
puritans  seemed  to  have  their  match  in  the  plenty 
of  the  new  harvest  of  reform. 

"With  this  din  of  opinion  and  debate  there  was  a 
keener  scrutiny  of  institutions  and  domestic  life 
than  any  we  had  known ;  there  was  sincere  protest 
ing  against  existing  evils,  and  there  were  changes 
of  employment  dictated  by  conscience.  No  doubt 
there  was  plentiful  vaporing,  and  cases  of  backslid 
ing  might  occur.  But  in  each  of  these  movements 
emerged  a  good  result,  a  tendency  to  the  adoption 
of  simpler  methods,  and  an  assertion  of  the  suffi 
ciency  of  the  private  man.  Thus  it  was  directly  in 
the  spirit  and  genius  of  the  age,  what  happened  in 

VOL.  m.  16 


242  NEW  ENGLAND  REFORMERS. 

one  instance  when  a  church  censured  and  threatened 
to  excommunicate  one  of  its  members  on  account 
of  the  somewhat  hostile  part  to  the  church  which 
his  conscience  led  him  to  take  in  the  anti-slavery  busi 
ness  ;  the  threatened  individual  immediately  ex 
communicated  the  church,  in  a  public  and  formal 
process.  This  has  been  several  times  repeated:  it 
was  excellent  when  it  was  done  the  first  time,  but 
of  course  loses  all  value  when  it  is  copied.  Every 
project  in  the  history  of  reform,  no  matter  how  vio 
lent  and  surprising,  is  good  when  it  is  the  dictate 
of  a  man's  genius  and  constitution,  but  very  dull 
and  suspicious  when  adopted  from  another.  It  is 
right  and  beautiful  in  any  man  to  say,  '  I  will  take 
this  coat,  or  this  book,  or  this  measure  of  corn  of 
yours,'  —  in  whom  we  see  the  act  to  be  original, 
and  to  flow  from  the  whole  spirit  and  faith  of  him ; 
for  then  that  taking  will  have  a  giving  as  free  and 
divine;  but  we  are  very  easily  disposed  to  resist 
the  same  generosity  of  speech  when  we  miss  origi 
nality  and  truth  to  character  in  it. 

There  was  in  all  the  practical  activities  of  New 
England  for  the  last  quarter  of  a  century,  a  grad 
ual  withdrawal  of  tender  consciences  from  the  so 
cial  organizations.  There  is  observable  throughout,  r 
the  contest  between  mechanical  and  spiritual  meth 
ods,  but  with  a  steady  tendency  of  the  thoughtful 
and  virtuous  to  a  deeper  belief  and  reliance  on  spir 
itual  facts. 


NEW  ENGLAND  REFORMERS.  243 

/  In  politics  for  example  it  is  easy  to  see  the  pro-**" 
gress  of  dissent.  The  country  is  full  of  rebellion  ; 
the  country  is  full  of  kings.  Hands  off !  let  there 
be  110  control  and  no  interference  in  the  adminis 
tration  of  the  affairs  of  this  kingdom  of  me. 
Hence  the  growth  of  the  doctrine  and  of  the  party 
of  Free  Trade,  and  the  willingness  to  try  that  ex 
periment,  in  the  face  of  what  appear  incontestable 
facts.  I  confess,  the  motto  of  the  Globe  news 
paper  is  so  attractive  to  me  that  I  can  seldom  find 
much  appetite  to  read  what  is  below  it  in  its  col 
umns  :  "  The  world  is  governed  too  much."  So 
the  country  is  frequently  affording  solitary  exam 
ples  of  resistance  to  the  government,  solitary  nul- 
lifiers,  who  throw  themselves  on  their  reserved 
rights ;  nay,  who  have  reserved  all  their  rights  ; 
who  reply  to  the  assessor  and  to  the  clerk  of  court 
that  they  do  not  know  the  State,  and  embarrass  the 
courts  of  law  by  non-juring  and  the  commander- 
in-chief  of  the  militia  by  non-resistance. 

The  same  disposition  to  scrutiny  and  dissent  ap 
peared  in  civil,  festive,  neighborly,  and  domestic 
society.  A  restless,  prying,  conscientious  criticism 
broke  out  in  unexpected  quarters.  Who  gave  me 
the  money  with  which  I  bought  my  coat  ?  Why 
should  professional  labor  and  that  of  the  counting- 
house  be  paid  so  disproportionately  to  the  labor  of 
the  porter  and  woodsawyer  ?  This  whole  business 


244  NEW  ENGLAND  REFORMERS. 

of  Trade  gives  me  to  pause  and  think,  as  it  consti 
tutes  false  relations  between  men  ;  inasmuch  as  I 
am  prone  to  count  myself  relieved  of  any  respon 
sibility  to  behave  well  and  nobly  to  that  person 
whom  I  pay  with  money ;  whereas  if  I  had  not  that 
commodity,  I  should  be  put  on  my  good  behavior 
in  all  companies,  and  man  would  be  a  benefactor  to 
man,  as  being  himself  his  only  certificate  that  he 
had  a  right  to  those  aids  and  services  which  each 
asked  of  the  otherj  Am  I  not  too  protected  a  per 
son  ?  is  there  not  a  wide  disparity  between  the  lot 
of  me  and  the  lot  of  thee,  my  poor  brother,  my 
poor  sister  ?  Am  I  not  defrauded  of  my  best  cul 
ture  in  the  loss  of  those  gymnastics  which  manual 
labor  and  the  emergencies  of  poverty  constitute  ? 
I  find  nothing  healthful  or  exalting  in  the  smooth 
conventions  of  society ;  I  do  not  like  the  close  air 
of  saloons.  I  begin  to  suspect  myself  to  be  a 
prisoner,  though  treated  with  all  this  courtesy  and 
luxury.  I  pay  a  destructive  tax  in  my  conformity. 
The  same  insatiable  criticism  may  be  traced  in 
the  efforts  for  the  reform  of  Education.  The  pop 
ular  education  has  been  taxed  with  a  want  of  truth 
and  nature.  It  was  complained  that  an  education 
to  things  was  not  given.  We  are  students  of 
words :  we  are  shut  up  in  schools,  and  colleges,  and 
recitation-rooms,  for  ten  or  fifteen  years,  raid  come 
out  at  last  with  a  bag  of  wind,  a  memory  of  words, 


NEW  ENGLAND  REFORMERS.  245 

and  do  not  know  a  thing.  We  cannot  use  our 
hands,  or  our  leg's,  or  our  eyes,  or  our  arms. 
We  do  not  know  an  edible  root  in  the  woods,  we 
cannot  tell  our  course  by  the  stars,  nor  the  hour  of 
the  day  by  the  sun.  It  is  well  if  we  can  swim  and 
skate.  We  are  afraid  of  a  horse,  of  a  cow,  of  a 
dog,  of  a  snake,  of  a  spider.  The  Roman  rule  was 
to  teach  a  boy  nothing  that  he  could  not  learn 
standing.  The  old  English  rule  was,  '  All  summer 
in  the  field,  and  all  winter  in  the  study.'  And  it 
seems  as  if  a  man  should  learn  to  plant,  or  to  fish, 
or  to  hunt,  that  he  might  secure  his  subsistence  at 
all  events,  and  not  be  painful  to  his  friends  and 
fellow-men.  The  lessons  of  science  should  be  ex 
perimental  also.  The  sight  of  a  planet  through  a 
telescope  is  worth  all  the  course  on  astronomy ;  the 
shock  of  the  electric  spark  in  the  elbow,  outvalues 
all  the  theories  ;  the  taste  of  the  nitrous  oxide,  the 
firing  of  an  artificial  volcano,  are  better  than  vol 
umes  of  chemistry. 

One  of  the  traits  of  the  new  spirit  is  the  in 
quisition  it  fixed  on  our  scholastic  devotion  to  the 
dead  languages.  The  ancient  languages,  with  great 
beauty  of  structure,  contain  wonderful  remains  of 
genius,  which  draw,  and  always  will  draw,  certain 
likeminded  men, —  Greek  men,  and  Roman  men, — 
in  all  countries,  to  their  study ;  but  by  a  wonderful 
drowsiness  of  usage  they  had  exacted  the  study  of 


246  NEW  ENGLAND  REFORMERS. 

all  men.  Once  (say  two  centuries  ago),  Latin  and 
Greek  had  a  strict  relation  to  all  the  science  and 
culture  there  was  in  Europe,  and  the  Mathematics 
had  a  momentary  importance  at  some  era  of  activ 
ity  in  physical  science.  These  things  became  ste 
reotyped  as  education,  as  the  manner  of  men  is. 
But  the  Good  Spirit  never  cared  for  the  colleges, 
and  though  all  men  and  boys  were  now  drilled  in 
Latin,  Greek,  and  Mathematics,  it  had  quite  left 
these  shells  high  and  dry  on  the  beach,  and  was 
now  creating  and  feeding  other  matters  at  other 
ends  of  the  world.  But  in  a  hundred  high  schools 
and  colleges  this  warfare  against  common  sense 
still  goes  on.  Four,  or  six,  or  ten  years,  the  pupil 
is  parsing  Greek  and  Latin,  and  as  soon  as  lie 
leaves  the  University,  as  it  is  ludicrously  styled,  he 
shuts  those  books  for  the  last  time.  Some  thou 
sands  of  young  men  are  graduated  at  our  colleges  in 
this  country  every  year,  and  the  persons  who,  at 
forty  years,  still  read  Greek,  can  all  be  counted  on 
your  hand.  I  never  met  with  ten.  Four  or  five 
persons  I  have  seen  who  read  Plato. 

But  is  not  this  absurd,  that  the  whole  liberal 
talent  of  this  country  should  be  directed  in  its  best 
years  on  studies  which  lead  to  nothing?  "What 
was  the  consequence?  Some  intelligent  persons 
said  or  thought,  'Is  that  Greek  and  Latin  some 
spell  to  conjure  with,  and  not  words  of  reason  ?  If 


NEW  ENGLAND  REFORMERS.  247 

the  physician,  the  lawyer,  the  divine,  never  use  it 
to  come  at  their  ends,  I  need  never  learn  it  to  come 
at  mine.  Conjuring  is  gone  out  of  fashion,  and  I 
will  omit  this  conjugating,  and  go  straight  to  af 
fairs.'  So  they  jumped  the  Greek  and  Latin,  and 
read  law,  medicine,  or  sermons,  without  it.  To 
the  astonishment  of  all,  the  self-made  men  took 
even  ground  at  once  with  the  oldest  of  the  regular 
graduates,  and  in  a  few  months  the  most  conserva 
tive  circles  of  Boston  and  New  York  had  quite 
forgotten  who  of  their  gownsmen  was  college-bred, 
and  who  was  not. 

One  tendency  appears  alike  in  the  philosophical 
speculation  and  in  the  rudest  democratical  move 
ments,  through  all  the  petulance  and  all  the  puer 
ility,  the  wish,  namely,  to  cast  aside  the  superfluous 
and  arrive  at  short  methods ;  urged,  as  I  suppose, 
by  an  intuition  that  the  human  spirit  is  equal  to 
all  emergencies,  alone,  and  that  man  is  more  often 
injured  than  helped  by  the  means  he  uses. 

I  conceive  this  gradual  casting  off  of  material 
aids,  and  the  indication  of  growing  trust  in  the 
private  self-Gupplicd  powers  of  the  individual,  to 
be  the  affirmative  principle  of  the  recent  philos 
ophy,  and  that  it  is  feeling  its  own  profound  truth 
and  is  reaching  forward  at  this  very  hour  to  the 
happiest  conclusions.  I  readily  concede  that  in 
this,  as  in  every  period  of  intellectual  activity, 


248  NEW  ENGLAND  REFORMERS. 

there  has  been  a  noise  of  denial  and  protest ;  much 
was  to  be  resisted,  much  was  to  be  got  rid  of  by 
those  who  were  reared  in  the  old,  before  they  could 
begin  to  affirm  and  to  construct.  Many  a  reformer 
perishes  in  his  removal  of  rubbish  ;  and  that  makes 
the  offensiveness  of  the  class.  They  are  partial; 
they  are  not  equal  to  the  work  they  pretend.  They 
lose  their  way ;  in  the  assault  on  the  kingdom  of 
darkness  they  expend  all  their  energy  on  some 
accidental  evil,  and  lose  their  sanity  and  power  of 
benefit.  It  is  of  little  moment  that  one  or  two  or 
twenty  errors  of  our  social  system  be  corrected,  but 
of  much  that  the  man  be  in  his  senses. 

The  criticism  and  attack  on  institutions,  which 
we  have  witnessed,  has  made  one  thing  plain,  that 
society  gains  nothing  whilst  a  man,  not  himself 
renovated,  attempts  to  renovate  things  around  him : 
he  has  become  tediously  good  in  some  particular 
but  negligent  or  narrow  in  the  rest ;  and  hypocrisy 
and  vanity  are  often  the  disgusting  result. 

It  is  handsomer  to  remain  in  the  establishment 
better  than  the  establishment,  and  conduct  that 
in  the  best  manner,  than  to  make  a  sally  against 
evil  by  some  single  improvement,  without  sup 
porting  it  by  a  total  regeneration.  Do  not  be  so 
vain  of  your  one  objection.  Do  you  think  there 
is  only  one  ?  Alas  !  my  good  friend,  there  is  no 
part  of  society  or  of  life  better  than  any  other 


NEW  ENGLAND  REFORMERS.  249 

part.  All  our  things  are  right  and  wrong  together. 
The  wave  of  evil  washes  all  our  institutions  alike. 
Do  you  complain  of  our  Marriage  ?  Our  marriage 
is  no  worse  than  our  education,  our  diet,  our  trade, 
our  social  customs.  Do  you  complain  of  the  laws 
of  Property  ?  It  is  a  pedantry  to  give  such  impor 
tance  to  them.  Can  we  not  play  the  game  of  life 
with  these  counters,  as  well  as  with  those  ?  in  the 
institution  of  property,  as  well  as  out  of  it  ?  Let 
into  it  the  new  and  renewing  principle  of  love,  and 
property  will  be  universality.  No  one  gives  the 
impression  of  superiority  to  the  institution,  which 
he  must  give  who  will  reform  it.  It  makes  no 
difference  what  you  say,  you  must  make  me  feel 
that  you  are  aloof  from  it ;  by  your  natural  and 
supernatural  advantages  do  easily  see  to  the  end 
of  it,  —  do  see  how  man  can  do  without  it.  Now 
all  men  are  on  one  side.  No  man  deserves  to  be 
heard  against  property.  Only  Love,  only  an  Idea, 
is  against  property  as  we  hold  it. 

I  cannot  afford  to  be  irritable  and  captious,  nor 
to  waste  all  my  time  in  attacks.  If  I  should  go 
out  of  church  whenever  I  hear  a  false  sentiment 
I  could  never  stay  there  five  minutes.  But  why 
come  out  ?  the  street  is  as  false  as  the  church,  and 
when  I  get  to  my  house,  or  to  my  manners,  or 
to  my  speech,  I  have  not  got  away  from  the  lie. 
When  we  see  an  eager  assailant  of  one  of  these 


250  NEW  ENGLAND  REFORMERS. 

wrongs,  a  special  reformer,  we  feel  like  asking 
him,  What  right  have  you,  sir,  to  your  one  virtue  ? 
Is  virtue  piecemeal  ?  This  is  a  jewel  amidst  the 
rags  of  a  beggar. 

In  another  way  the  right  will  be  vindicated.  In 
the  midst  of  abuses,  in  the  heart  of  cities,  in  the 
aisles  of  false  churches,  alike  in  one  place  and  in 
another, —  wherever,  namely,  a  just  and  heroic  soul 
finds  itself,  there  it  will  do  what  is  next  at  hand, 
and  by  the  new  quality~of  character  it  shall  put 
forth  it  shall  abrogate  that  old  condition,  law  or 
school  in  which  it  stands,  before  the  law  of  its 
own  mind. 

If  partiality  was  one  fault  of  the  movement 
party,  the  other  defect  was  their  reliance  on  Asso 
ciation.  Doubts  such  as  those  I  have  intimated 
drove  many  good  persons  to  agitate  the  questions 
of  social  reform.  But  the  revolt  against  the  spirit 
of  commerce,  the  spirit  of  aristocracy,  and  tho 
inveterate  abuses  of  cities,  did  not  appear  possible 
to  individuals ;  and  to  do  battle  against  numbers 
they  armed  themselves  with  numbers,  and  against 
concert  they  relied  on  new  concert. 

Following  or  advancing  beyond  the  ideas  of  St. 
Simon,  of  Fourier,  and  of  Owen,  three  communities 
have  already  been  formed  in  Massachusetts  on 
kindred  plans,  and  many  more  in  the  country  at 
large.  They  aim  to  give  every  member  a  share  in 


NEW  ENGLAND  REFORMERS.  251 

the  manual  labor,  to  give  an  equal  reward  to  labor 
and  to  talent,  and  to  unite  a  liberal  culture  with 
an  education  to  labor.  The  scheme  offers,  by  the 
economies  of  associated  labor  and  expense,  to  make 
every  member  rich,  on  the  same  amount  of  proper 
ty  that,  in  separate  families,  would  leave  every 
member  poor.  These  new  associations  are  com 
posed  of  men  and  women  of  superior  talents  and 
sentiments  ;  yet  it  may  easily  be  questioned  wheth 
er  such  a  community  will  draw,  except  in  its  begin 
nings,  the  able  and  the  good ;  whether  those  who 
have  energy  will  not  prefer  their  chance  of  superi 
ority  and  power  in  the  world,  to  the  humble  cer 
tainties  of  the  association;  whether  such  a  retreat 
does  not  promise  to  become  an  asylum  to  those  who 
have  tried  and  failed,  rather  than  a  field  to  the 
strong  ;  and  whether  the  members  will  not  necessa 
rily  be  fractions  of  men,  because  each  finds  that  he 
cannot  enter  it  without  some  compromise.  Friend 
ship  and  association  are  very  fine  things,  and  a 
grand  phalanx  of  the  best  of  the  human  race,  band 
ed  for  some  catholic  object ;  yes,  excellent ;  but  re 
member  that  no  society  can  ever  be  so  large  as  one 
man.  He,  in  his  friendship,  in  his  natural  and  mo 
mentary  associations,  doubles  or  multiplies  himself ; 
but  in  the  hour  in  which  he  mortgages  himself  to 
two  or  ten  or  twenty,  he  dwarfs  himself  below  the 
stature  of  one. 


252  NEW  ENGLAND  REFORMERS. 

But  the  men  of  less  faith  could  not  thus  believe, 
and  to  such,  concert  appears  the  sole  specific  of 
strength.  I  have  failed,  and  you  have  failed,  but 
perhaps  together  we  shall  not  fail.  Our  house 
keeping  is  not  satisfactory  to  us,  but  perhaps  a 
phalanx,  a  community,  might  be.  Many  of  us  have 
differed  in  opinion,  and  we  could  find  no  man  who 
could  make  the  truth  plain,  but  possibly  a  college, 
or  an  ecclesiastical  council,  might.  I  have  not  been 
able  either  to  persuade  my  brother  or  to  prevail 
on  myself  to  disuse  the  traffic  or  the  potation  of 
brandy,  but  perhaps  a  pledge  of  total  abstinence 
might  effectually  restrain  us.  The  candidate  my 
party  votes  for  is  not  to  be  trusted  with  a  dollar, 
but  he  will  be  honest  in  the  Senate,  for  we  can 
bring  public  opinion  to  bear  on  him.  Thus  concert 
was  the  specific  in  all  cases.  But  concert  is  neither 
better  nor  worse,  neither  more  nor  less  potent,  than 
individual  force.  All  the  men  in  the  world  cannot 
make  a  statue  walk  and  speak,  cannot  make  a  drop 
of  blood,  or  a  blade  of  grass,  any  more  than  one 
man  can.  But  let  there  be  one  man,  let  there  be 
truth  in  two  men,  in  ten  men,  then  is  concert  for 
the  first  time  possible ;  because  the  force  which 
moves  the  world  is  a  new  quality,  and  can  never  be 
furnished  by  adding  whatever  quantities  of  a  differ 
ent  kind.  What  is  the  use  of  the  concert  of  the 
false  and  the  disunited  ?  There  can  be  no  concert 


NEW  ENGLAND  REFORMERS.  253 

in  two,  where  there  is  no  concert  in  one.  When 
the  individual  is  not  individual,  but  is  dual ;  when 
his  thoughts  look  one  way  and  his  actions  another  ; 
when  his  faith  is  traversed  b^  his  habits ;  when  his 
will,  enlightened  by  reason,  is  warped  by  his  sense  ; 
when  with  one  hand  he  rows  and  with  the  other 
backs  water,  what  concert  can  be  ? 

I  do  not  wonder  at  the  interest  these  projects  in 
spire.  The  world  is  awaking  to  the  idea  of  union, 
and  these  experiments  show  what  it  is  thinking  of. 
It  is  and  will  be  magic.  Men  will  live  and  com 
municate,  and  plough,  and  reap,  and  govern,  as  by 
added  ethereal  power,  when  once  they  are  united  ; 
as  in  a  celebrated  experiment,  by  expiration  and 
respiration  exactly  together,  four  persons  lift  a 
heavy  man  from  the  ground  by  the  little  finger 
only,  and  without  sense  of  weight.  But  this  union 
must  be  inward,  and  not  one  of  covenants,  and  is 
to  be  reached  by  a  reverse  of  the  methods  they 
use.  The  union  is  only  perfect  when  all  the  uniters 
are  isolated.  It  is  the  union  of  friends  who  live  in 
different  streets  or  towns.  Each  man,  if  he  attempts 
to  join  himself  to  others,  is  on  all  sides  cramped 
and  diminished  of  his  proportion ;  and  the  stricter 
the  union  the  smaller  and  the  more  pitiful  he  is. 
But  leave  him  alone,  to  recognize  in  every  hour  and 
place  the  secret  soul ;  he  will  go  up  and  down  doing 
the  works  of  a  true  member,  and,  to  the  astonish- 


254  NEW  ENGLAND  REFORMERS. 

ment  of  all,  the  work  will  be  done  with  concert, 
though  no  man  spoke.  Government  will  be  ada 
mantine  without  any  governor.  The  union  must  be 
ideal  in  actual  individualism. 

I  pass  to  the  indication  in  some  particulars  of 
that  faith  in  man,  which  the  heart  is  preaching  to 
us  in  these  days,  and  which  engages  the  more  re 
gard,  from  the  consideration  that  the  speculations 
of  one  generation  are  the  history  of  the  next  fol 
lowing. 

In  alluding  just  now  to  our  system  of  education, 
I  spoke  of  the  deadness  of  its  details.  But  it  is 
open  to  graver  criticism  than  the  palsy  of  its  mem 
bers  :  it  is  a  system  of  despair.  The  disease  with 
which  the  human  mind  now  labors  is  want  of  faith. 
Men  do  not  believe  in  a  power  of  education.  We 
do  not  think  we  can  speak  to  divine  sentiments  in 
man,  and  we  do  not  try.  We  renounce  all  high 
aims.  We  believe  that  the  defects  of  so  many 
perverse  and  so  many  frivolous  people  who  make 
up  society,  are  organic,  and  society  is  a  hospital  of 
incurables.  A  man  of  good  sense  but  of  little  faith, 
whose  compassion  seemed  to  lead  him  to  church  as 
often  as  he  went  there,  said  to  me  that  "  he  liked 
to  have  concerts,  and  fairs,  and  churches,  and  other 
public  amusements  go  on."  I  am  afraid  the  re 
mark  is  too  honest,  and  comes  from  the  same  ori 
gin  as  the  maxim  of  the  tyrant,  "  If  you  would  rule 


NEW  ENGLAND  REFORMERS.  255 

the  world  quietly,  you  must  keep  it  amused."  I 
notice  too  that  the  ground  on  which  eminent  public 
servants  urge  the  claims  of  popular  education  is 
fear  ;  '  This  country  is  filling  up  with  thousands 
and  millions  of  voters,  and  you  must  educate  them 
to  keep  them  from  our  throats.'  We  do  not  be 
lieve  that  any  education,  any  system  of  philosophy, 
any  influence  of  genius,  will  ever  give  depth  of  in 
sight  to  a  superficial  mind.  Having  settled  our 
selves  into  this  infidelity,  our  skill  is  expended  to 
procure  alleviations,  diversion,  opiates.  We  adorn 
the  victim  with  manual  skill,  his  tongue  with  lan 
guages,  his  body  with  inoffensive  and  comely  man 
ners.  So  have  we  cunningly  hid  the  tragedy  of 
limitation  and  inner  death  we  cannot  avert.  Is  it 
strange  that  society  should  be  devoured  by  a  secret 
melancholy  which  breaks  through  all  its  smiles  and 
all  its  gayety  and  games  ? 

But  even  one  step  farther  our  infidelity  has  gone. 
It  appears  that  some  doubt  is  felt  by  good  and  wise 
men  whether  really  the  happiness  and  probity  of 
men  is  increased  by  the  culture  of  the  mind  in  those 
disciplines  to  which  we  give  the  name  of  education. 
Unhappily  too  the  doubt  comes  from  scholars,  from 
persons  who  have  tried  these  methods.  In  their 
experience  the  scholar  was  not  raised  by  the  sa 
cred  thoughts  amongst  which  he  dwelt,  but  used 
them  to  selfish  ends.  He  was  a  profane  person, 


256  NEW  ENGLAND  REFORMERS. 

and  became  a  showman,  turning  his  gifts  to  a  mar 
ketable  use,  and  not  to  his  own  sustenance  and 
growth.  It  was  found  that  the  intellest  could  be 
independently  developed,  that  is,  in  separation  from 
the  man,  as  any  single  organ  can  be  invigorated, 
and  the  result  was  monstrous.  A  canine  appetite 
for  knowledge  was  generated,  which  must  still  be 
fed  but  was  never  satisfied,  and  this  knowledge,  not 
being  directed  on  action,  never  took  the  character 
of  substantial,  humane  truth,  blessing  those  whom 
it  entered.  It  gave  the  scholar  certain  powers  of 
expression,  the  power  of  speech,  the  power  of  po 
etry,  of  literary  art,  but  it  did  not  bring  him  to 
peace  or  to  beneficence. 

When  the  literary  class  betray  a  destitution  of 
faith,  it  is  not  strange  that  society  should  be  dis 
heartened  and  sensualized  by  unbelief.  What  rem 
edy  ?  Life  must  be  lived  on  a  higher  plane.  We 
must  go  up  to  a  higher  platform,  to  which  we  are 
always  invited  to  ascend ;  there,  the  whole  aspect 
of  things  changes.  I  resist  the  skepticism  of  our 
education  and  of  our  educated  men.  ll  do  not  be 
lieve  that  the  differences  of  opinion  and  character 
in  men  are  organic.  I  do  not  recognize,  beside  the 
class  of  the  good  and  the  wise,  a  permanent  class 
of  skeptics,  or  a  class  of  conservatives,  or  of  malig- 
nants,  or  of  materialists.  I  do  not  believe  in  two 
classes.  You  remember  the  story  of  the  poor  wo- 


NEW  ENGLAND  REFORMERS.  257 

man  who  importuned  King  Philip  of  Macedon  to 
grant  her  justice,  which  Philip  refused  :  the  woman 
exclaimed,  "  I  appeal :  "  the  king,  astonished,  asked 
to  whom  she  appealed :  the  woman  replied,  "  From 
Philip  drunk  to  Philip  sober."  The  text  will  suit 
me  very  well.  I  believe  not  in  two  classes  of  men, 
but  in  man  in  two  moods,  in  Philip  drunk  and 
Philip  sober.  I  think,  according  to  the  good- 
hearted  word  of  Plato,  "Unwillingly  the  soul  is 
deprived  of  truth."  Iron  conservative,  miser,  or 
thief,  no  man  is  but  by  a  supposed  necessity  which 
he  tolerates  by  shortness  or  torpidity  of  sight.  The 
soul  lets  no  man  go  without  some  visitations  and 
holydays  of  a  diviner  presence.  It  would  be  easy 
to  show,  by  a  narrow  scanning  of  any  man's  biog 
raphy,  that  we  are  not  so  wedded  to  our  paltry  per 
formances  of  every  kind  but  that  every  man  has  at 
intervals  the  grace  to  scorn  his  performances,  in 
comparing  them  with  his  belief  of  what  he  should 
do  ;  —  that  he  puts  himself  on  the  side  of  his  ene 
mies,  listening  gladly  to  what  they  say  of  him,  and 
accusing  himself  of  the  same  things. 

What  is  it  men  love  in  Genius,  but  its  infinite 
hope,  which  degrades  all  it  has  done  ?  Genius 
counts  all  its  miracles  poor  and  short.  Its  own 
idea  it  never  executed.  The  Iliad,  the  Hamlet,  the 
Doric  column,  the  Roman  arch,  the  Gothic  minster, 
the  German  anthem,  when  they  are  ended,  the 

VOL.  III.  17 


258  NEW  ENGLAND  REFORMERS. 

master  casts  behind  him.  How  sinks  the  song  in 
the  waves  of  melody  which  the  universe  pours  over 
his  soul !  Before  that  gracious  Infinite  out  of  which 
he  drew  these  few  strokes,  how  mean  they  look, 
though  the  praises  of  the  world  attend  them.  From 
the  triumphs  of  his  art  he  turns  with  desire  to  this 
greater  defeat.  Let  those  admire  who  will.  With 
silent  joy  he  sees  himself  to  be  capable  of  a  beauty 
that  eclipses  all  which  his  hands  have  done ;  all 
which  human  hands  have  ever  done. 

Well,  we  are  all  the  children  of  genius,  the  chil 
dren  of  virtue,  —  and  feel  their  inspirations  in  our 
happier  hours.  Is  not  every  man  sometimes  a  rad 
ical  in  politics  ?  Men  are  conservatives  when  they 
are  least  vigorous,  or  when  they  are  most  luxurious. 
They  are  conservatives  after  dinner,  or  before  tak 
ing  their  rest ;  when  they  are  sick,  or  aged :  in  the 
morning,  or  when  their  intellect  or  their  conscience 
has  been  aroused ;  when  they  hear  music,  or  when 
they  read  poetry,  they  are  radicals.  In  the  circle 
of  the  rankest  tories  that  eould  be  collected  in  Eng 
land,  Old  or  New,  let  a  powerful  and  stimulating 
intellect,  a  man  of  great  heart  and  mind  act  on 
them,  and  very  quickly  these  frozen  conservators 
will  yield  to  the  friendly  influence,  these  hopeless 
will  begin  to  hope,  these  haters  will  begin  to  love, 
these  immovable  statues  will  begin  to  spin  and  re 
volve.  I  cannot  help  recalling  the  fine  anecdote 


NEW  ENGLAND  REFORMERS.  259 

which  Warton  relates  of  Bishop  Berkeley,  when  he 
was  preparing  to  leave  England  with  his  plan  of 
planting  the  gospel  among  the  American  savages. 
"  Lord  Bathurst  told  me  that  the  members  of  the 
Scriblerus  club  being  met  at  his  house  at  dinner, 
they  agreed  to  rally  Berkeley,  who  was  also  his 
guest,  on  his  scheme  at  Bermudas.  Berkeley,  hav 
ing  listened  to  the  many  lively  things  they  had  to 
say,  begged  to  be  heard  in  his  turn,  and  displayed 
his  plan  with  such  an  astonishing  and  animating 
force  of  eloquence  and  enthusiasm  that  they  were 
struck  dumb,  and,  after  some  pause,  rose  up  all  to 
gether  with  earnestness,  exclaiming,  c  Let  us  set  out 
with  him  immediately.'  "  Men  in  all  ways  are  bet 
ter  than  they  seem.  They  like  flattery  for  the  mo 
ment,  but  they  know  the  truth  for  their  own.  It  is 
a  foolish  cowardice  which  keeps  us  from  trusting 
them  and  speaking  to  them  rude  truth.  They  re 
sent  your  honesty  for  an  instant,  they  will  thank 
you  for  it  always.  What  is  it  we  heartily  wish  of 
each  other  ?  Is  it  to  be  pleased  and  flattered  ?  No,, 
but  to  be  convicted  and  exposed,  to  be  shamed  out 
oF  our  nonsense  of  all  kinds,  and  made  men  of,  in 
stead  of  ghosts  and  phantoms.  We  are  weary  of 
gliding  ghostlike  through  the  world,  which  is  itself 
so  slight  and  unreal.  We  crave  a  sense  of  reality, 
though  it  come  in  strokes  of  pain.  I  explain  so,  — 
by  this  manlike  love  of  truth,  —  those  excesses  and 


260  NEW  ENGLAND  REFORMERS. 

errors  into  which  souls  of  great  vigor,  but  not  equal 
insight,  often  fall.  They  feel  the  poverty  at  the 
bottom  of  all  the  seeming  affluence  of  the  world. 
They  know  the  speed  with  which  they  come  straight 
through  the  thin  masquerade,  and  conceive  a  dis 
gust  at  the  indigence  of  nature  :  Rousseau,  Mira- 
beau,  Charles  Fox,  Napoleon,  Byron,  —  and  I  could 
easily  add  names  nearer  home,  of  raging  riders,  who 
drive  their  steeds  so  hard,  in  the  violence  of  living 
to  forget  its  illusion :  they  would  know  the  worst, 
and  tread  the  floors  of  hell.  The  heroes  of  ancient 
and  modern  fame,  Cimon,  Themistocles,  Alcibiades, 
Alexander,  Caesar,  have  treated  life  and  fortune  as 
a  game  to  be  well  and  skilfully  played,  but  the 
stake  not  to  be  so  valued  but  that  any  time  it  could 
be  held  as  a  trifle  light  as  air,  and  thrown  up. 
Caesar,  just  before  the  battle  of  Pharsalia,  dis 
courses  with  the  Egyptian  priest  concerning  the 
fountains  of  the  Nile,  and  offers  to  quit  the  army, 
the  empire,  and  Cleopatra,  if  he  will  show  him 
those  mysterious  sources. 

The  same  magnanimity  shows  itself  in  our  social 
relations,  in  the  preference,  namely,  which  each 
man  gives  to  the  society  of  superiors  over  that  of 
his  equals.  All  that  a  man  has  will  he  give  for 
right  relations  with  his  mates.  All  that  he  has 
will  he  give  for  an  erect  demeanor  in  every  com 
pany  and  on  each  occasion.  He  aims  at  such 


NEW  ENGLAND  REFORMERS.  261 

tilings  as  his  neighbors  prize,  and  gives  his  days 
and  nights,  his  talents  and  his  heart,  to  strike  a 
good  stroke,  to  acquit  himself  in  all  men's  sight  as 
a  man.  The  consideration  of  an  eminent  citizen, 
of  a  noted  merchant,  of  a  man  of  mark  in  his  pro 
fession  ;  a  naval  and  military  honor,  a  general's 
commission,  a  marshal's  baton,  a  ducal  coronet,  the 
laurel  of  poets,  and,  anyhow  procured,  the  acknowl 
edgment  of  eminent  merit, — have  this  lustre  for 
each  candidate  that  they  enable  him  to  walk  erect 
and  unashamed  in  the  presenca  of  some  persons  be 
fore  whom  he  felt  himself  inferior.  Having  raised 
himself  to  this  rank,  having  established  his  equal 
ity  with  class  after  class  of  those  with  whom  he 
would  live  well,  he  still  finds  certain  others  be 
fore  whom  he  cannot  possess  himself,  because  they 
have  somewhat  fairer,  somewhat  grander,  somewhat 
purer,  which  extorts  homage  of  him.  Is  his  ambi 
tion  pure  ?  then  will  his  laurels  and  his  possessions 
seem  worthless  :  instead  of  avoiding  these  men  who 
make  his  fine  gold  dim,  he  will  cast  all  behind  him 
and  seek  their  society  only,  woo  and  embrace  this 
his  humiliation  and  mortification,  until  he  shall 
know  why  his  eye  sinks,  his  voice  is  husky,  and  his 
brilliant  talents  are  paralyzed  in  this  presence.  He 
is  sure  that  the  soul  which  gives  the  lie  to  all 
things  will  tell  none.  His  constitution  will  not 
mislead  him.  If  it  cannot  carry  itself  as  it  ought, 


262  NEW  ENGLAND  REFORMERS. 

high  and  unmatchable  in  the  presence  of  any  man  ; 
if  the  secret  oracles  whose  whisper  makes  the  sweet 
ness  and  dignity  of  his  life  do  here  withdraw  and 
accompany  him  no  longer,  —  it  is  time  to  under 
value  what  he  has  valued,  to  dispossess  himself  of 
what  he  has  acquired,  and  with  Caesar  to  take  in 
his  hand  the  army,  the  empire,  and  Cleopatra,  and 
say,  "  All  these  will  I  relinquish,  if  you  will  show 
me  the  fountains  of  the  Nile."  Dear  to  us  are 
those  who  love  us  ;  the  swift  moments  we  spend 
with  them  are  a  compensation  for  a  great  deal  of 
misery ;  they  enlarge  our  life  ;  —  but  dearer  are 
those  who  reject  us  as  unworthy,  for  they  add  an 
other  life  :  they  build  a  heaven  before  us  whereof 
we  had  not  dreamed,  and  thereby  supply  to  v;s  new 
powers  out  of  the  recesses  of  the  spirit,  and  urge  us 
to  new  and  un attempted  performances. 

As  every  man  at  heart  wishes  the  best  and  not 
inferior  society,  wishes  to  be  convicted  of  his  error 
and  to  come  to  himself, —  so  he  wishes  that  the  same 
healing  should  not  stop  in  his  thought,  but  should 
penetrate  his  will  or  active  power.  The  selfish 
man  suffers  more  from  his  selfishness  than  he  from 
whom  that  selfishness  withholds  some  important 
benefit.  What  he  most  wishes  is  to  be  lifted  to 
some  higher  platform,  that  he  may  see  beyond  his 
present  fear  the  transalpine  good,  so  that  his  fear, 
his  coldness,  his  custom  may  be  broken  up  like 


NEW  ENGLAND  REFORMERS.  263 

fragments  of  ice,  melted  and  carried  away  in  the 
great  stream  of  good  will.  Do  you  ask  my  aid  ? 
I  also  wish  to  be  a  benefactor.  I  wish  more  to  be 
a  benefactor  and  servant  than  you  wish  to  be 
served  by  me ;  and  surely  the  greatest  good  fortune 
that  could  befall  me  is  precisely  to  be  so  moved  by 
you  that  I  should  say,  '  Take  me  and  all  mine,  and 
use  me  and  mine  freely  to  your  ends  ! '  for  I  could 
not  say  it  otherwise  than  because  a  great  enlarge 
ment  had  come  to  my  heart  and  mind,  which  made 
me  superior  to  my  fortunes.  Here  we  are  para 
lyzed  with  fear ;  we  hold  on  to  our  little  properties, 
house  and  land,  office  and  money,  for  the  bread 
which  they  have  in  our  experience  yielded  us,  al 
though  we  confess  that  our  being  does  not  flow 
through  them.  We  desire  to  be  made  great ;  we 
desire  to  be  touched  with  that  fire  which  shall  com 
mand  this  ice  to  stream,  and  make  our  existence  a 
benefit.  If  therefore  we  start  objections  to  your 
project,  O  friend  of  the  slave,  or  friend  of  the  poor 
or  of  the  race,  understand  well  that  it  is  because 
we  wish  to  drive  you  to  drive  us  into  your  meas 
ures.  We  wish  to  hear  ourselves  confuted.  Yvre 
are  haunted  with  a  belief  that  you  have  a  secret 
which  it  would  highliest  advantage  us  to  learn,  and 
we  would  force  you  to  impart  it  to  us,  though  it 
should  bring  us  to  prison  or  to  worse  extremity. 
Nothing  shall  warp  me  from  the  belief  that  every 


264  NEW  ENGLAND  REFORMERS.  1 

man  is  a  lover  of  truth.  There  is  no  pure  lie,  no 
pure  malignity  in  nature.  The  entertainment  of 
the  proposition  of  depravity  is  the  last  profligacy 
and  profanation.  There  is  no  skepticism,  no  athe 
ism  but  that.  Could  it  be  received  into  common 
belief,  suicide  would  unpeople  the  planet.  It  has 
had  a  name  to  live  in  some  dogmatic  theology,  but 
each  man's  innocence  and  his  real  liking  of  his 
neighbor  have  kept  it  a  dead  letter.  I  remember 
standing  at  the  polls  one  day  when  the  anger  .of 
the  political  contest  gave  a  certain  grimness  to  the 
faces  of  the  independent  electors,  and  a  good  man 
at  my  side,  looking  on  the  people,  remarked,  "  I  am 
satisfied  that  the  largest  part  of  these  men,  on  ei 
ther  side,  mean  to  vote  right."  I  suppose  consider 
ate  observers,  looking  at  the  masses  of  men  in  their 
blameless  and  in  their  equivocal  actions,  will  assent, 
that  in  spite  of  selfishness  and  frivolity,  the  gen 
eral  purpose  in  the  great  number  of  persons  is  fidel 
ity.  The  reason  why  any  one  refuses  his  assent  to 
your  opinion,  or  his  aid  to  your  benevolent  design, 
is  in  you :  he  refuses  to  accept  you  as  a  bringer  of 
truth,  because  though  you  think  you  have  it,  he 
feels  that  you  have  it  not.  You  have  not  given  him 
the  authentic  sign. 

If  it  were  worth  while  to  run  into  details  this 
general  doctrine  of  the  latent  but  ever  soliciting 
Spirit,  it  would  be  easy  to  adduce  illustration  in 


NEW  ENGLAND  REFORMERS.  265 

particulars  of  a  man's  equality  to  the  Church,  of 
his  equality  to  the  State,  and  of  his  equality  to 
every  other  man.  It  is  yet  in  all  men's  memory 
that,  a  few  years  ago,  the  liberal  churches  com 
plained  that  the  Calvinistic  church  denied  to  them 
the  name  of  Christian.  I  think  the  complaint  was 
confession  :  a  religious  church  woidd  not  complain. 
A  religious  man,  like  Behmen,  Fox,  or  Sweden- 
borg  is  not  irritated  by  wanting  the  sanction  of  the 
Church,  but  the  Church  feels  the  accusation  of  his 
presence  and  belief. 

It  only  needs  that  a  just  man  should  walk  in  our 
streets  to  make  it  appear  how  pitiful  and  inarti 
ficial  a  contrivance  is  our  legislation.  The  man 
whose  part  is  taken  and  who  does  not  wait  for 
society  in  anything,  has  a  power  which  society  can 
not  choose  but  feel.  The  familiar  experiment  called 
the  hydrostatic  paradox,  in  which  a  capillary  col 
umn  of  water  balances  the  ocean,  is  a  symbol  of  the 
relation  of  one  man  to  the  whole  family  of  men. 
The  wise  Dandamis,  on  hearing  the  lives  of  Soc 
rates,  Pythagoras  and  Diogenes  read,  "  judged 
them  to  be  great  men  every  way,  excepting  that 
they  were  too  much  subjected  to  the  reverence  of 
the  laws,  which  to  second  and  authorize,  true  vir 
tue  must  abate  very  much  of  its  original  vigor." 

And  as  a  man  is  equal  to  the  Church  and  equal 
.  to  the  State,  so  he  is  equal  to  every  other  man. 


266  NEW  ENGLAND  REFORMERS. 

The  disparities  of  power  in  men  are  superficial; 
and  all  frank  and  searching  conversation,  in  which 
a  man  lays  himself  open  to  his  brother,  apprises 
each  of  their  radical  unity.  When  two  persons  sit 
and  converse  in  a  thoroughly  good  understanding, 
the  remark  is  sure  to  be  made,  See  how  we  have 
disputed  about  words !  Let  a  clear,  apprehensive 
mind,  such  as  every  man  knows  among  his  friends, 
converse  with  the  most  commanding  poetic  genius, 
I  think  it  would  appear  that  there  was  no  inequal 
ity  such  as  men  fancy,  between  them ;  that  a  per 
fect  understanding,  a  like  receiving,  a  like  perceiv 
ing,  abolished  differences  ;  and  the  poet  would  con 
fess  that  his  creative  imagination  gave  him  no  deep 
advantage,  but  only  the  superficial  one  that  he 
could  express  himself  and  the  other  could  not ;  that 
his  advantage  was  a  knack,  which  might  impose  on 
indolent  men  but  could  not  impose  on  lovers  of 
truth;  for  they  know  the  tax  of  talent,  or  what  a 
price  of  greatness  the  power  of  expression  too  often 
pays.  I  believe  it  is  the  conviction  of  the  purest 
men  that  the  net  amount  of  man  and  man  does  not 
much  vary.  Each  is  incomparably  superior  to  his 
companion  in  some  faculty.  His  want  of  skill  in 
other  directions  has  added  to  his  fitness  for  his  own 
work.  Each  seems  to  have  some  compensation 
yielded  to  him  by  his  infirmity,  and  every  hinder- 
ance  operates  as  a  concentration  of  his  force. 


NEW  ENGLAND  REFORMERS.  267 

These  and  the  like  experiences  intimate  that 
man  stands  in  strict  connection  with  a  higher  fact 
never  yet  manifested.  There  is  power  over  and 
behind  us,  and  we  are  the  channels  of  its  commu 
nications.  We  seek  to  say  thus  and  so,  and  over 
our  head  some  spirit  sits  which  contradicts  what 
we  say.  We  would  persuade  our  fellow  to  this 
or  that ;  another  self  within  our  eyes  dissuades 
him.  That  which  we  keep  back,  this  reveals.  In 
vain  we  compose  our  faces  and  our  words  ;  rTEoMs 
uncontrollable  communication  with  the  enemy,  and 
he  answers  civilly  to  us,  but  believes  the  spirit. 
We  exclaim,  '  There 's  a  traitor  in  the  house  !  '  but 
at  last  it  appears  that  he  is  the  true  man,  and  I  am 
the  traitor.  This  open  channel  to  the  highest  life 
is  the  first  and  last  reality,  so  subtle,  so  quiet,  yet 
so  tenacious,  that  although  I  have  never  expressed 
the  truth,  and  although  I  have  never  heard  the 
expression  of  it  from  any  other,  I  know  that  the 
whole  truth  is  here  for  me.  What  if  I  cannot 
answer  your  questions  ?  I  am  not  pained  that  I 
cannot  frame  a  reply  to  the  question,  What  is  the 
operation  we  call  Providence  ?  There  lies  the  un 
spoken  thing,  present,  omnipresent.  Every  time 
we  converse  we  seek  to  translate  it  into  speech, 
but  whether  we  hit  or  whether  we  miss,  we  have 
the  fact.  Every  discourse  is  an  approximate  an 
swer  :  but  it  is  of  small  consequence  that  we  do 


268  NEW  ENGLAND  REFORMERS. 

not  get  it  into  verbs  and  nouns,  whilst  it  abides 
for  contemplation  forever. 

If  the  auguries  of  the  prophesying  heart  shall 
make  themselves  good  in  time,  the  man  who  shall 
be  born,  whose  advent  men  and  events  prepare  and 
foreshow,  is  one  who  shall  enjoy  his  connection 
with  a  higher  life,  with  the  man  within  man ;  shall 
destroy  distrust  by  his  trust,  shall  'use  his  native 
but  forgotten  methods,  shall  not  take  counsel  of 
flesh  and  blood,  but  shall  rely  on  the  Law  alive 
and  beautiful  which  works  over  our  heads  and 
under  our  feet.  Pitiless,  it  avails  itself  of  our  suc 
cess  when  we  obey  it,  and  of  our  ruin  when  we 
contravene  it.  Men  are  all  secret  believers  in  it, 
else  the  word  justice  would  have  no  meaning  :  they 
believe  that  the  best  is  the  true  ;  that  right  is  done 
at  last ;  or  chaos  would  come.  It  rewards  actions 
after  their  nature,  and  not  after  the  design  of  the 
agent.  4  Work,'  it  saith  to  man,  c  in  every  hour, 
paid  or  unpaid,  see  only  that  thou  work,  and  thou 
canst  not  escape  the  reward :  whether  thy  work  be 
fine  or  coarse,  planting  corn  or  writing  epics,  so 
only  it  be  honest  work,  done  to  thine  own  appro 
bation,  it  shall  earn  a  reward  to  the  senses  as  well 
as  to  the  thought :  no  matter  how  often  defeated, 
you  are  born  to  victory.  The  reward  of  a  thing 
well  done,  is  to  have  done  it.' 

As  soon  as  a  man  is  wonted   to  look   beyond 


NEW  ENGLAND  REFORMERS.  269 

surfaces,  and  to  see  how  this  high  will  prevails 
without  an  exception  or  an  interval,  he  settles  him 
self  into  serenity.  He  can  already  rely  on  the  laws 
of  gravity,  that  every  stone  will  fall  where  it  is 
due ;  the  good  globe  is  faithful,  and  carries  us 
Securely  through  the  celestial  spaces,  anxious  or 
resigned,  we  need  not  interfere  to  help  it  on  :  and 
he  will  learn  one  day  the  mild  lesson  they  teach, 
that  our  own  orbit  is  all  our  task,  and  we  need  not 
assist  the  administration  of  the  universe.  Do  not 
be  so  impatient  to  set  the  town  right  concerning 
the  unfounded  pretensions  and  the  false  reputation 
of  certain  men  of  standing.  They  are  laboring 
harder  to  set  the  town  right  concerning  themselves, 
and  will  certainly  succeed.  Suppress  for  a  few 
days  your  criticism  on  the  insufficiency  of  this  or 
that  teacher  or  experimenter,  and  he  will  have 
demonstrated  his  insufficiency  to  all  men's  eyes. 
In  like  manner,  let  a  man  fall  into  the  divine  cir 
cuits,  and  he  is  enlarged.  Obedience  to  his  genius 
is  the  only  liberating  influence.  We  wish  to  escape 
from  subjection  and  a  sense  of  inferiority,  and  we 
make  self-denying  ordinances,  we  drink  water,  we 
eat  grass,  we  refuse  the  laws,  we  go  to  jail :  it  is 
all  in  vain  ;  only  by  obedience  to  his  genius,  only 
by  the  freest  activity  in  the  way  constitutional  to 
him,  does  an  angel  seem  to  arise  before  a  man  and 
lead  him  by  the  hand  out  of  all  the  wards  of  the 


270  NEW  ENGLAND  REFORMERS. 

That  which  befits  us,  embosomed  in  beauty  and 
wonder  as  we  are,  is  cheerfulness  and  courage,  and 
the  endeavor  to  realize  our  aspirations.  The  life 
of  man  is  the  true  romance,  which  when  it  is  val 
iantly  conducted  will  yield  the  imagination  a  higher 
joy  than  any  fiction.  Ail  around  us  what  powers 
are  wrapped  up  under  the  coarse  mattings  of  cus 
tom,  and  all  wonder  prevented.  It  is  so  wonderful 
to  our  neurologists  that  a  man  can  see  without  his 
eyes,  that  it  does  not  occur  to  them  that  it  is  just 
as  wonderful  that  he  should  see  with  them ;  and 
that  is  ever  the  difference  between  the  wise  and  the 
unwise  :  the  latter  wonders  at  what  is  unusual,  the 
wise  man  wonders  at  the  usual.  Shall  not  the 
heart  which  has  received  so  much,  trust  the  Power 
by  which  it  lives  ?  May  it  not  quit  other  leadings, 
and  listen  to  the  Soul  that  has  guided  it  so  gently 
and  taught  it  so  much,  secure  that  the  future  will 
be  worthy  of  the  past  ? 


14  DAY  USE 

RETURN  TO  DESK  FROM  WHICH  BORROWED 

LOAN  DEPT. 

This  book  is  due  on  the  last  date  stamped  below, 
or  on  the  date  to  which  renewed.  Renewals  only: 

Tel.  No.  642-3405 

Renewals  may  be  made  4  days  prior  to  date  due. 
Renewed  books  are  subject  to  immediate  recall. 

BEC'DLD  FEB     9  73 -10  AM  9  1 


FEB  1  8  1983  L  S 


REG.  cm.  JAN  13*83 


0  19% 


OCTO 


LD2lA-40m-3,'72 
(Qll738lO)476^-A-32 


rkelt 


U.  C.  BERKELEY  LIBRARIES 


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